Wherein Crowley Goes On Holiday
by screenings
Summary: In short, Sam doesn't die completing the trials (and thus completes them), which leaves a rather human Crowley left at a rather loose end. Naturally, for anyone left with some spare time and a newfound humanity, the response that should inevitably follow is going on holiday and getting absolutely plastered.
1. In Which Crowley Falls Over

After the gates of Hell were well and truly shut, there had been a tiny pause, a little hiatus, between the reality of his new predicament and his realisation of it. While around him, he could hear yells of shock and fear, and he could sense flashes of light and explosion through the tinted, leaded windows of the church, he couldn't focus on that, couldn't even think about it. He felt the air on his face, stinging the bruises and cuts left from that tussle (well, being helplessly beaten up, really) with Abaddon; he could sense a thousand thousand nerve endings, suddenly attuned to his being in a way it had never been before. He could no longer see the flow and ebb of power, of grace and energy; the colours of Sam Winchester's soul in front of him had dulled into nothing, leaving just the Moose's body moving around with no indication of the soul-being beneath. Where his senses had been dulled to the supernatural, however, he had a far clearer view of everything else; as the Moose staggered past him in a sense of shock he couldn't really process yet for any meaning, he was afforded a view of the man in what he termed half-sarcastically as Technicolour- where he had previously had to squint past his soul to see the face of Sam Winchester, he could now see just how _much_ the hunter needed a haircut, and perhaps a few hours of sleep judging by the rings under his eyes.

He stared at it all in this little pause in time, sensing everything he had never done before.

And then he _felt_.

He pulled in a horrified gasp of air to his burning lungs as his mind began to roil with emotions he hadn't felt with such clarity for centuries. His stomach was churning with guilt and fear and hunger, and he retched, leaning over as far as possible as he could in his chained position as he coughed and tried to expel something, anything from his empty stomach. And all the while, his mind was awash with a conscience, clouding his before utterly unemotional thought process- a tiny little voice in his head, screaming _nonononono_ at himself, at the Winchesters, at his actions and his newfound humanity and everything he had lost.

So yeah, his first steps into that brave new world of humanity hadn't been the most glamorous of his career.

And when he had finally gathered enough of himself together that he had paid attention to the outside world and seen the Winchesters on the ground at the entrance to the church; well, seeing two hunters that he had only ever known to be furiously angry and hostile embracing each other on the ground was a little bit jarring. Not to mention the fact he could hear the rattling gasps of Moose Winchester: he wasn't a doctor, but he didn't need to be to know that sound was distinctly _not good_.

He had looked past them then, to the skies they were staring up at- and he couldn't help but feel a wrench of shock at the sight he was given. Through inky black skies, and through grey, shadowy clouds covering the stars, golden shapes fell. At first, his instinct had been a meteor shower- but meteors don't have wings.

He had been so taken with the sight of fallen angels then, he hadn't even noticed the older Winchester bundling the younger into the backseat of the Impala and sprinting to the driver's seat- he didn't even notice at all until he heard a screech of rubber and the spitting of gravel being forced backwards by the tyres.

As he looked in shock at the retreating figure of the Impala and the angels' golden wings burning in the atmosphere, his mind screaming with a thousand emotions at once, a single word emerged into his mind, took shape in his strained vocal chords.

"_Fuck!_" He yelled, suddenly savagely angry, yanking at his chains as he felt a new wash of anger and fear and desperate loneliness.

Okay, so his first steps into the brave new world of humanity hadn't so much been glamorous as an utter train wreck.

Hours passed and he had whiled them away by debating precisely how any of the newly fallen angels would kill him upon discovering him- how when Dean or Sam came back, they would make good on their promise to take advantage of his newfound humanity and put a pellet of lead through his skull.

He partly debated over how the body he had previously just been possessing was now utterly his- he wasn't overly sure how to deal with that. He sort of lamented not picking a meatsuit with more of a lifespan.

But mostly, he promised himself that if he ever got out of this without ending up back in the shut-down hell as a soul to newly torture (which was a million to one), he was going on a _bloody holiday_. He made a promise he knew could never happen with a sort of gallows humour he had never really had since the 1600s; he'd get his money out of all those offshore accounts he had stored finances in over the years, he'd go everywhere with good scotch and fine restaurants and a fair culture. Hell, he'd take the Winchesters and their pet angel along; it would be funny to take them to Vegas, maybe Disneyland. He entertained the notion of the culturally clueless Castiel amongst all the scantily clad women in Vegas; a pained smile flitted across his expression before disappearing again. His newly found emotions reared their head again- a desperate need for love and company washed over him, and he_ really _felt disgusted at himself for that particular emotional urge.

Just before the trial had been completed, he had voiced this particular need for love to a particular hunter; as much as he had tried to deny it had happened afterwards, denying it doesn't really work when you're trying to deny something that happened seconds ago in front of the guy you're denying it to.

The hours went on. And then, a roar of engines. He shut his eyes, tried to control his instincts and emotions to little success. Then he opened them and got ready for- well, for going back to Hell.

The Impala pulled up. A single click then slam of the doors- only one person coming to seal his fate. He took a mental coin-flip. Squirrel. He twisted his head behind him to the doors caught a glance of short hair and bowlegs in the corner of his eye. Bingo.

Quick steps coming up behind him. Soft tapping of rubber sole against stone flags. He heard the elder brother of the deadly hunting duo come up to his side- slowly, tiredly, he raised his head to meet the Winchester's gaze. The expression he was met with was one he had never seen before on Dean's face- fear. Bleak eyes, a haunted look on the hunter's face- he would have started with a joke on Dean looking how he felt, but it was so close to the mark that he couldn't get it out.

Besides, the likelihood his execution would get moved forwards to a few seconds after that remark was pretty high. He settled for the question which made most sense accompanied with his knowledge of the previous few hours.

"Where's Sam?" He managed, his throat hoarse.

Dean glowered. "None of your damn business, Crowley."

"Then what are you making my business?" He said, too tired from the day's events and his newfound humanity to even contest the lack of information surrounding the younger Winchester brother. Dean looked the tiniest bit surprised by this- to be honest, he was himself a little. It wasn't his typical style to let things lie.

Dean regained his composure a second later, face hardening. Crowley couldn't even retain enough control over himself not to wince- he knew what was coming now. Exit stage Crowley, this time for a more permanent exit from the Earth. He didn't close his eyes; he felt he had to retain that much dignity. He stared down Dean Winchester, instead, with a tired expression. He was chained to a chair, he was cut and bruised all over, he was pretty damn sure he had broken a rib when Abaddon had kicked him on the ground, and his face around his mouth was caked in dried blood from where Sam had finished off the process of curing him. But he was Crowley; he was human and he was weak and he was restrained, but he was still Crowley and he was going to face his sentence face-on.

It didn't happen.

Dean jammed his hand into his pocket, retrieved a few keys. He stepped forward carefully over the devil's trap and unlocked the padlock on Crowley's neck- iron bands of metal clattered to the ground. He could barely conceal his shock as he twisted his now-free neck around further, trying to observe what Dean was doing. The hunter crossed to the front, roughly grabbing a manacle and jamming a tiny key into it. Crowley pulled away from Dean's hands at that point (the hunter flinching back reflexively) to pull off the steel handcuffs himself, before dropping them roughly to the ground. Metal clacked against stone in the silent church; Dean stepped back across the devil's trap, observing Crowley closely.

Slowly, agonisingly slowly, Crowley forced his legs to pull himself up- and he had never remembered standing being this hard, but he wanted to retain the little dignity he had left and actually stand up for himself.

He fell over.

"Jesus buggering-" He gasped on the floor, curling up in a ball on the stone flags as he fell onto his most likely fractured rib. Dean had stepped back smoothly from the falling ex-demon. Crowley felt like asking whether Dean had ever participated in a trust fall, because he really didn't seem to understand the basics of catching people. He would have asked it, too, if he hadn't been so busy trying to breathe.

That was when he noticed he was lying halfway across the devil's trap.

"Hm."

Above him, he could hear the squirrel humming out a response to this particular revelation. Crowley finally got his breath back.

"Done staring, or are we going to stretch the 'watching Crowley suffer' period out a little longer?" He gasped out, propping himself onto an elbow and gingerly probing the painful area underneath his jacket. Above him, silence. Crowley looked up to an intimidating, furiously angry Winchester towering over him. If he hadn't been too busy being in almost overwhelming pain, he would have definitely been scared.

"Here's the deal."

Oh, how the tables were turning. Only a day ago, Crowley had been the one in control, the one putting deals down on the table. Here he was, lying on the floor in agony, human and utterly vulnerable and being given an offer of a deal.

"I never see you again," Dean said with burning green eyes and a clenched jaw. "You never try to touch me or anyone I know. If I do see you again, or you mess with someone I know, I give you a one-way ticket to Hell."

Crowley was utterly failing in maintaining his poker face, concerned with concealing pain rather than emotional response. His expression was purely shocked as he stared up at Dean.

"...Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why- let me go?"

What a fucking stupid question, he lamented to himself. Let's poke the bear with a stick and see if he bites my head off. Great plan.

Dean almost looked like he was asking himself the same thing, really, which was hardly surprising but still a little unsettling. His jaw clenched further, and Crowley noticed for the first time the watery, bloodshot nature of the man's eyes.

"A bit 'cause you were the third trial, and I don't know if killing you will undo shutting down Hell," He began, eyes training not on Crowley but on the chains lying on the ground beside him. "A bit 'cause I'd like to think you might actually try to make up for what you've done. But mostly 'cause-" Dean took in a long breath, eyes shutting briefly and opening again. "'Cause I have bigger problems to deal with now, and killing you might get demons on my tail, and I have too many things to deal with without adding-" He gestured to Crowley. "-This to the mix. So I don't want to see you again, I don't want to even hear about you doing anything to anyone. And you get to leave here alive. We got a deal?"

It went against everything Crowley had ever said or done with the Winchesters before. But he wasn't that Crowley, not anymore. And so he nodded.

"Deal."

Dean surveyed him a second longer, before turning on his heel and striding away from him, to the doors of the derelict church. Crowley couldn't restrain himself this time, couldn't keep his emotions from overriding his mind.

"Are they alive?"

Dean stopped at the entrance. Turned his head back slightly.

"Who?"

Crowley sighed.

"Both of them. I saw the angels fall, and I saw you dragging Moose into the backseat. Are they both alive?"

From the tiny sliver of dawning sunlight falling on Dean's face, Crowley made out his expression softening- just slightly, only slightly.

"Yeah. They're alive."

And with that, Dean walked out of the church. A roar of engines came a half-minute later, and Crowley was left alone once more, lying on the floor of the church, half across the devil's trap.

A pause. A hiatus.

"Bloody hell," He murmured. He was free- and he didn't mean only from the devil's trap, although that was a bonus too, he had to admit. He was free from Hell, free from responsibilities; and most importantly, free from getting shot in the face by the damn Winchesters.

And then he remembered his promise to himself, made hours ago, when he was certain of his death coming.

He should go on holiday.

This new train of thought elicited a little chuckle from him, a smile crossing his lips for the first time in a long time. He should go on bloody _holiday._

But first, he thought as he shifted painfully on the ground, he should go to bloody hospital.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Okay, so this fic here is my non-serious crackfic to allow me to wind down after writing my super serious other fic.**

** Although, in hindsight, as much as I wanted this opening to be realistic to the canon, it has sort of impacted on any available humour other than Crowley falling over. **

**I swear to god it will get funnier.**

**In any case. Because this is my non-serious crackfic, I only have a basic plot outline which I'm writing from, so- and here's the fun part, dear readers- you can feel free to tell me anywhere you might want Crowley to go as he sets off on his journey around the world. I have a fair few locations in mind, but I'm always happy to add more to the list and subject our favourite ex-King of Hell to more terrors.**

**Please review and tell me if anything is seriously wrong with my writing, if anything is seriously good, or you want Crowley to go to Disneyland or something. **


	2. In Which Crowley Gets A Car

Two weeks later, the late autumn weather had turned to the crisp chill of early winter, September giving way to October. And Crowley emerged from hospital, bruised and battered and with a fractured rib, but very much alive.

Over the past fortnight, Crowley had gotten used to a couple of things he hadn't had to do for centuries. Wait for wounds to heal, for one thing. Eat and drink for necessity, not just for pleasure.

And replacing his clothing instead of just snapping it fixed. That had really frustrated Crowley more than anything else. He got his clothes tailor-made at Savile Row since the unfortunate demise of his personal tailor; they were expensive, but Crowley knew the difference between off-the-shelf and bespoke, and felt the extra expense was more than worth it.

And damn it, it had been one of his _best suits_. Having to accept that having no demonic abilities meant that the ripped, bloodstained and crumpled suit and jacket was completely beyond help was a sort of wrench for him- he had added Savile Row to his mental holiday list as soon as he realised how much of a lost cause the poor ruined suit was.

Speaking of that mental holiday list, he had been compiling it since his newfound freedom began. As much as he had been stuck in hospital, with doctors and CAT scans and being poked in his bloody fractured rib for two weeks, his mind had been set on something else.

He had never really been one for settling down unless necessary, and at the moment, when he didn't know the demons or angels stuck down on Earth from the general public, he especially didn't want to try and hide out in a warded trailer like he had done last time he was trying to stay undiscovered (and besides, 'Godstiel' had found him anyway, so it hadn't exactly worked out as it was). Crowley knew that if Abbadon was still alive and on Earth (which would probably be a strong likelihood knowing his luck) then her first port of call would be to exact revenge for the guy who had been the door that shut Hell down, regardless of his willingness in being said door. Moving around was going to be paramount in ensuring his survival beyond the next few months.

Also, he _liked_ the idea of going on holiday. When Crowley had still been a demon, bereft of most emotional response and committed to the job of ruling the most chaotic workplace in the known universe, he had just accepted the strain of presiding over demonkind and went on without any sort of obvious stress to his daily life.  
>Now he was human, his past experiences came flooding back to him with his new emotionally tinted hindsight- every memory had some sort of new response. Mostly guilt and fear.<br>As a result, Crowley felt pretty stressed after a full two weeks of feeling- and he felt long overdue for a holiday, some R&R in his life. Maybe a drink. Maybe three.

So he had a plan.

Step One: Get below the radar. Crowley wanted to travel around in style, but that was hardly CCTV-free; to ensure he wasn't picked up by any angels or demons who had enough presence to check a hotel guestbook or a camera's files, he needed alibis, ID- and most importantly, someone on the inside to cover his tracks.  
>He had the person on the inside. He just needed to make sure they covered his tracks.<p>

Step Two: Get his assets and his property in order. He had money stashed in accounts everywhere in case of any emergency; he had warehouses everywhere, some for purpose, some for supernaturally related storage, most for Crowley's 'just in case' preporatory nature. He needed to secure everything he couldn't keep on him, and take what he needed as quickly as possible before anyone noticed his presence.

And then, when both of those criteria were over and done with, he could get on with 'Step 3': going on holiday.  
>Step 3 was currently of indeterminate length, but Crowley had a lot of places to go, people to avoid, scotch to drink. He wasn't going to put a time limit on his little excursion. Since the "meteor showers" of two weeks ago had placed a lot of restrictions on airspace and put back a lot of flights, going international wasn't an option at the moment; Crowley was going to grab a car and head instead down to a location he had regrettably not spent enough time in before- Las Vegas.<p>

Vegas had only ever really been a business place for Crowley in the past- back when he had only been a worker in Hell, not the leader, the ex-crossroads demon had spent more than his fair share of time in the city- beyond deals with financial and political bastions, making deals with rich people who wanted to cheat chance and get richer was the best sort of deal Crowley could make. He had thought anyone who sold their soul to make money at gambling were probably too stupid to even know how to gamble, but hey- they wanted to have an eternity in Hell in return for a little extra cash, that was their problem.

But now he was human and Earth-bound, he figured that Vegas could be a good place to start his little excursion- a whole city built for entertainment. Besides, the likelihood of running into any Earth-bound angels in the City of Sin was mercifully low- it was ideal.

But he couldn't get ahead of himself. One step after another.

Crowley stopped in the entrance of the hospital, thumb looped into the pocket of his new (and hopefully temporary) jean trousers as he fished an iPhone from his jacket pocket. It was the only thing he had with him still from his demonic past self- he had changed the '666' number sim card, though. A little too conspicuous at times such as these.

He tapped the keys, slowly, carefully, as if still considering whether or not to do what he was about to do. His thumb hovered pensively over the 'call' button for a few seconds, before he eventually sighed and tapped the button, holding it to his ear.

He didn't have to wait long for it to pick up.

"Cecily Hammond," A faintly frustrated voice sounded. Crowley didn't know whether to be relieved or worried she had picked up.

"Cecily, it's a pleasure to hear your dulcet tones once more," He intoned, trying to summon up his previous, ruler-of-hell personality. It was hard to do when wearing second-hand jeans and an AC/DC t-shirt.

"Crowley?" A surprised voice replied. "You've been up top all this time?"

He didn't have an opportunity to reply, as Cecily went straight into a shocked rant.

"It's been _chaos, _Crowley, where have you _been_?! Heaven and Hell are completely locked down, we have crazy angels and crazy demons doing _whatever they damn feel like doing_, and I'm not a warrior, Crowley, I'm here to look for marks for deals _we can no longer make_ because Hell is shut down and all I've been looking at now is angels and demons just _wantonly_ killing people and killing each other, you've been off the radar for a full _two weeks_, and now you just _call up_ and-"

"_Cecily_," Crowley growled out into the phone, irritation bleeding into his voice. "Listen to me."

The other end of the line went silent. Crowley went over his rehearsed lines. If she reacted differently to how he hoped, this could go very badly, very quickly.

"Are you in the NSA offices at the moment?"

"-Well, yeah, yes, I am."

She was still nervous around him. At least that counted in his favour.

"I'm at Sioux Falls Hospital in South Dakota. I'm looking at a CCTV camera right now. Say hi."

Silence over the line, punctuated by muffled tapping sounds of a keyboard. Then Cecily spoke again.

"What the hell are you _wearing_?"

Crowley looked down at his shabby attire, then back at the camera. "It's not exactly bespoke, I'll give you that."

"What are you even doing in that?"

Crowley gave her a look through the CCTV. A patient on a drip, smoking outside, gave an odd look to the British man giving evil eyes to a camera.

"Seriously though, Crowley."

He sighed faintly. "Remember our last bit of correspondance?"

"About the prophet? Sure."

"And about how the Winchesters were trying to shut down Hell with those little trials of theirs?"

"-Uh, yeah, course. I don't understa-"

"Of course you don't," Crowley said, still staring down the camera, a little of his old personality returning to him as he cut off his once-subordinate. "However, I got to know the full story first-hand. There were three trials to shutting down Hell. The first was killing my hound. The second, getting an innocent soul from Hell. The third-"

He paused. Now came the moment of reckoning. He needed her to view this like a businesswoman, not a demon.

"-Curing a demon."

The longest pause in time of Crowley's life. He continued staring down the camera, hoping his nervousness didn't show. Behind him, the smoking patient was giving Crowley the look one would give a deranged man.

"What." Cecily said with a pained tone.

"What?" He replied, attempting to feign nonchalance and failing.

"You're human."

"In a manner of speaking."

"I'm hanging up now."

"Well, you'll miss out on a lucrative deal, darling."

Silence on the line, but not a click.

"A deal? You want to make me a deal?"

Here goes with phase two of his rehearsed phone call. "You're cut off from Hell, Cecily, so now you have to make do with what power you currently have, what possessions you currently have," He rattled off, still staring into the CCTV. "And as much as the NSA is a safe enough position, an angry Knight of Hell crashing through your door isn't going to be stopped by the US government."

"...Okay, you have a point so far."

It worried him that she hadn't denied Abbadon was on Earth. She should know better than anyone whether Abbadon was around or not. That was concerning.

"I happen to have a lot of possessions in a lot of places, a lot of which are extremely valuable and powerful- a lot of which I liberated from Lucifer's crypts."

Now he had her attention. Any demon who knew the price of power wanted the possessions of Lucifer.

"Go on."

"I wouldn't divulge the whereabouts of these storage facilities under duress, you know I happen to be an expert in torture," Crowley said, hoping to all that was and wasn't holy she didn't call his bluff on that one. "But I'll be more than happy to, in return for a small favour, give you 25 percent of these warehouses, which include several of the Lucifer's crypt items."

A crackle of static.

"A favour?"

"I need IDs which can stand up to international scrutiny- passports, driving licenses, everything, in multiple and different sets," Crowley began. "A good quality car, a suit, and most importantly, you to cover my back over any demonic and angelic presence in my area. You keep an eye and a satellite on me- you see something supernatural, you're to give me a call immediately. You erase CCTV, you destroy any electronic fingerprint I make. That's the favour."

A longer crackle of static indicating silence. Crowley unconsciously fiddled with a loose thread of his AC/DC t-shirt.

"30 percent, and I get all of the Lucifer items from the other warehouses," Cecily said eventually.

Crowley gave the CCTV a sudden, shocked look.

"_30 percent_?!"

"You're asking a big favour."

"Those warehouses contain _countless _priceless goods!"

"And I want 30 percent of them."

"_And_ the Lucifer items?"

The smoker behind Crowley was on the edge of calling hospital security.

"It's a dangerous world out there."

Crowley pursed his lips.

"I better get a damn good car for this."

"We got a deal?"

He sighed.

"Yeah, we do."

Suddenly, a woman in a smart suit jacket and rectangular framed glasses materialised in front of Crowley, a PDA in her hand.

The smoking patient behind them paused his silent beration of the crazy British guy talking about demons and glaring at a CCTV camera. He slowly looked down at his cigarette, back up again at the woman that had appeared from nowhere, and slowly shuffled back to the hospital entrance, staring back at them and back at his cigarette periodically with an air of confused shock.

"So, let's get a list done up," She said brightly. "Where are those warehouses?"

* * *

><p>Straightening the tie on a suit which was certainly not tailored, but still was far better than the ACDC shirt, Crowley gave a little nod to Cecily, who cheerily waved her PDA before disappearing- probably to consolidate her new belongings, Crowley thought to himself with some lamentation for his lost possessions. Centuries to accumulate, one single deal to lose them.

He walked out into the hospital car park, still unsteady from his injuries but walking nevertheless. He had decided to leave it to Cecily to pick his new car- all he needed was something practical which wouldn't get noticed that much.

He found it soon enough- it had a small post-it note attached to the bonnet with his name on it. He didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

Deep, shiny black, a streamlined design, and yet as typically large as all American sedan cars were. Four-door, hardtop, brown leather seating, and a shiny golden cross for a badge at the front and back.

It was the Chevrolet Impala, the brand new 2014 model.

He debated whether or not Cecily was doing this to mess with him or simply didn't know the significance of this particular brand.

When he found the message on the back of the post-it, however, reading "Everything a hunter could need", he very much believed she was messing with him.

Oh well. At least she hadn't stabbed him in the face. That was a start.

He found the keys on the driver's seat, along with a small briefcase with a key already in the lock. Sliding into the car, briefly inspecting the interior, he turned his attention to the briefcase, opening it and pulling out documents.

Passports, several of them. A couple of driver's licenses. No credit cards, but he could get money from his bank account later. Car insurance, and- oh, thank you Cecily- amongst the pile of passports, American and British and multiple others, he found a stark black one, decorated with an eagle- 'Diplomatic Passport' was written at the top, 'United States of America' on the bottom.

Crowley grinned. He could definitely use that. Weapon carrying, free upgrades to first class; this could be useful.

He shoved the files back into the briefcase, locked it and put the key in his jacket, before putting the key in the ignition and firing up the engine.

A smooth purr, far less conspicious or loud than the screeching roar of the Winchesters' Impala. A number of dials were spurred into action, and the car moved with ease at Crowley's direction out of the car park.

Well. Maybe he could get used to driving an Impala.

Suddenly, classic rock began blaring from the stereo. He located the off button, jammed his finger against it. He may be driving an Impala, but he wasn't _that _much of a Winchester.

The stereo didn't turn off.

He pulled over, stared at the stereo. He noticed for the first time a small post-it note attached to the CD slot, bearing the same handwriting as Cecily's other post-it notes.

_You didn't call for 2 weeks. You get Winchester music for 2 weeks._

Crowley considered this for a few seconds. Then he slowly lowered his head onto his steering wheel, his Impala's car horn mingling with the sounds of AC/DC.

Fucking _demons._

* * *

><p><strong>AN: For anyone who may not remember the one-episode wonder that was Cecily, she turned up in 9x10. She worked for the NSA, looking for marks to coerce into deals in her spare time. She also was one of Crowley's best demons. I mean, she also worked for Abbadon, but then Abbadon stabbed her to death so I don't think they're really best buddies.**

**She's also a Castiel fangirl. Cecily's one of the most relatable demons there has ever been.**

**And yes, there is an Impala 2014 model. I like to think Dean regularly exorcises them under his breath when he passes them by.**


	3. In Which Crowley Goes To Vegas

Only a few hours later, Crowley had been driven to distraction by Metallica, AC/DC and other such bastions of classic rock playing on repeat. After having collected a few bits and pieces from one of his warehouses, he had set about carefully removing the stereo from the car, gently laying the still-playing device on the ground, and then shooting it until it was little more than a smoking, mangled box of metal.

He drove in silence for a few hours then, not entirely enjoying the experience but preferring it immensely to Winchester music. He allowed his mind to wander instead, back through centuries of experience and history.

He kept coming back to more recent events. Like blind-dating Jody Mills and then hexing her. Or killing the people the Winchesters had once saved in precise and formulaic order. Or stabbing Meg.

A couple of hours of thinking was leading him back to the same events- the ones that so recently had involved his torturing and killing many, many others.

He decided enough was enough when he felt himself begin to get teary-eyed. He needed distraction. Maybe not AC/DC, but certainly _something_.

He pulled in at the next station he came to. His car needed fuel, and he needed a new stereo. Preferably one that wasn't cursed to play classic rock.

As he filled up the car, his iPhone rang in his pocket.

_"I like big butts and I cannot-"_

Crowley promised himself he'd change his ringtone from 'Baby Got Back' at the next possible opportunity as he desperately fished his phone out of his pocket.

"Hello?" He said with a frown.

"Enjoying your in-flight entertainment?"

Crowley resisted the urge to yell at Cecily for the torturous music he had been forced to endure. He spoke as calmly as he could manage.

"Once I shot it to pieces, it was surprisingly enjoyable."

"Hey! I worked hard on that cursed stereo!"

"And as much as I appreciate your hard work, I appreciated it more with a few bullet holes."

"Anyway," Cecily said, "I didn't call for that."

"So what, pray tell, did you call for?"

"That gas station you're at?"

Crowley glanced at the CCTV camera hanging from one of the pumps. Sure enough, it was focused on him. "What about it?"

"Well, the cashier isn't so much human as a hot angel with a 'Steve' namebadge."

Crowley paused. He looked around. He could just about see the cashier in a blue outfit and with a mop of dark hair that could only belong to one angel in particular.

"..._Hot_?" He said derisively to Cecily. He could hear the admiration in her voice when she next spoke.

"Well, less hot now he's lost his wings, but just look at that _face_!" A muffled tapping on a keyboard was audible over the line. "Feathered Castiel may be better, but you can still admire him regardless."

Crowley paused. He took the phone away from his ear, glared at it for a good two seconds, and held it back to his ear.

"You could have told me this before I filled up my car with petrol. But you waited to call until I had already had to pay for the damn stuff to warn me."

"I, uh-"

"Cecily. Did you get too distracted staring at a certain grounded angel to call me?"

A long pause over the line.

"Don't make me curse your car speakers. They're still intact, you know."

He sighed. Getting a demon to be his person on the inside was a worse and worse decision every time he needed them to actually be helpful.

"Okay, alright, fine. You call me more quickly next time, don't just sit there admiring them."

"Sorry, Crowley, that's gonna cost you extra."

"Admire them a little bit less?"

"No can do."

"Can you at least get police off my tail if I make a getaway without paying?"

"That wouldn't be any fun."

"Fuck you." He retorted.

"That really _would_ cost you more. 'Steve' though- no charge."

Crowley groaned in frustration and hung up. Bloody demons. If they weren't busy being evil, they were staring at bloody Castiel. Just because the celestial dick had had the good fortune to pick a good-looking vessel to get stuck in.

He looked towards the cashier with a little apprehension. Castiel hadn't noticed him yet- he seemed to be drinking something out of a polystyrene cup. Crowley raised an eyebrow. He knew the angels were grounded, but he hadn't thought they had been grounded _that_ much.

As he reluctantly walked through the sliding doors, fiddling with his wallet nervously, Castiel looked up. Not for the first time in the last five minutes, Crowley was reminded of Dean's promise to shoot him to next Wednesday if he so much as looked at him or anyone he knew. Hopefully buying petrol from Castiel wouldn't count as an offence he'd get lynched for.

Castiel's expression went from curious to angry in a split second; Crowley felt his already-nervous emotional state take a hike up to actively terrified as he watched the wingless angel reach one hand inside his jacket, not taking his eye contact off of him. Crowley caught a flash of silver as Castiel began to retract his hand and move around the counter. Crowley anxiously half-raised his hands in surrender.

"Okay, let's not make a scene. I'm willing to bet you're not the only employee in the building, and they would probably be a little shocked to come out and see 'Steve' stabbing a customer to death," Crowley said, trying to remain as calm as possible and failing. After all, last time the two of them had met, Crowley had dragged a tablet through the guy's stomach. The odds that Castiel would just let that lie was pretty low.

Castiel paused, flicked his eyes to the back of the building swiftly, and stood up straighter, putting back the angel blade slowly but not taking his eyes off of Crowley.

"What do you want, Crowley?"

Crowley gave a little, nervous shrug, and waved his wallet in the air.

"Why else would someone be here?"

Castiel really looked suspicious now.

"Really."

Crowley gave a helpless look at the CCTV camera behind Castiel before refocusing on the angel.

"I mean, I was going to buy a stereo as well, but I think I'll buy that somewhere that doesn't have an angel trying to stab me in the face."

Castiel's face twisted uncomfortably at the word 'angel'- a motion that Crowley noted but was too focused on self-preservation to comment on. He shifted behind the counter.

"Why are you driving?"

Crowley lowered his hands from their 'surrender' pose, flicked open his wallet and carefully approached the counter, pulling a credit card. He had never really used one before, but he knew the basics.

"Squirrel hasn't told you?"

Castiel's face twisted uncomfortably again.

"We haven't had an opportunity for conversation recently."

Crowley was curious as to why, but he was treading on thin ice with the Winchesters just being in the same room as Squirrel's pseudo-boyfriend.

"Well," He said smoothly, putting in his credit card and keying in the pin code (with extra care to shield it from the CCTV), "When Moose shut down Hell, that third trial of his was to cure a demon." It was becoming easier to admit with each time he had to say he was no longer a demon- he didn't know if he should be relieved or terrified by that. He glanced up at Castiel as he pulled out his credit card. The angel looked faintly shocked; it was more emotion than Crowley was used to seeing on his once-business partner's face.

"You're human."

Crowley frowned slightly.

"That's all people seem to be capable of saying once I tell them."

Castiel gave him an incredulous stare and said nothing. Crowley fidgeted with his credit card in the silence.

"Oookay. Look, if you see Squirrel and tell him about this, can you tell him I said literally all I came in here for was to pay for petrol? I'm really not trying to get shot in the face here, I quite _like_ not being shot."

Crowley paused slightly longer, hoping Castiel would say something and not be so bloody awkward. The silence continued and Crowley slowly began half-backing towards the automatic doors.

"Crowley."

Oh, finally the guy speaks. Crowley turned around fully to observe Castiel in all his polyester-adorned glory.

"I too am human."

Crowley slowly adopted an incredulous expression that could rival the Moose's best expression work.

"What."

Castiel sighed slightly.

"I was the third trial to shut down Heaven. Taking an angel's grace."

Crowley's expression went from rivalling the Moose's expression work to beating it outright in terms of utter incredulousness.

"You're human."

"That's all people seem capable of saying."

Crowley snorted slightly.

"Wow. Small world."

"Actually, I think it's fairly large. Around seven thousand kilometers in diameter."

"-No, no, I meant that we're both here- in this room- as the third trials of each of the-"

Castiel wasn't getting it.

"-You know what, forget it, don't worry. See you around." Crowley could've sworn he heard 'See you around _where_?' as he walked out.

He shook his head slowly as he left. Seriously, either they were both victims of unbelievable probablity, or being around the Winchesters tended to just increase the odds of being used in some sort of supernatural ritual.

He got into the Impala and drove away with no small amount of speed- he reckoned Castiel would probably end up calling his love interest and gossiping about their little chat to him, so he wanted to put as much distance between them as possible before an angry hunter ended up tracking him down.

* * *

><p>And so, for a few hours more in silent brooding over his past discrepancies, Crowley drove southeast to Arizona, the temperature gradually getting warmer and more arid. Eventually, the sky darkened, lights began to appear across the horizon, and a city swam into view, distracting Crowley from his thoughts and focusing him instead on his first holiday destination- Las Vegas.<p>

The 'City of Sin' was a little contradictory, he supposed, to his new non-demonic state- but he was human now, not a bloody angel. He was allowed to gamble and drink if he liked, if not take people's souls and put them in a queue for all eternity.

Oh well. Drinking and gambling was probably less stressful on his new emotional state anyway.

He did sort of miss the vindictive glee of selecting a lift music playlist for the eternal queue of the damned, though.

He pulled the Impala (with a distinct sense of embarassment) into the car park for the hotel he had booked with one of his brand new fake identities. And he had decided he wasn't going to travel like the Winchesters- no, shit motels just weren't his style. He smiled to himself as he looked up at the (admittedly a little tacky) red lettering and golden laurels that signified the 5 star hotel and casino that was Caesar's Palace.

The lobby was unbelievably lavish, as suited the most expensive hotel in a city filled with expensive hotels. Patterned marble floors were dotted with mosaics depicting various Roman heroes and gods, the walls and ceilings similarly adorned. A central fountain in the low-ceilinged, circular lobby depicted three toga-wearing statues on top of shallow basins pouring water from one to the other. At the very end of the huge hotel lobby were the concierge desks, which Crowley made his way to, pulling behind him a slim suitcase he had found in one of his many warehouses.

A tired-looking woman gave him a smile as he made his way to the desk.

"Welcome to Caesar's Palace, may I help you?"

"Yes, I'd like to check into my room- the Palace Tower penthouse?"

She gave him a nod, turned to tap something into the computer before turning back.

"Mr Thorn?"

"That's right." It hadn't escaped his notice that all of his new identities had been given names that related to demonic characters in films. Just another thing to quietly curse Cecily for under his breath.

"If you'd just follow my colleague-" She gave a sharp look and a gesture to a young man half-asleep against the wall, who straightened with a guilty expression on his face and quickly took Crowley's bag, leading him to a lift.

The Palace Tower penthouse was actually one of many Palace Tower penthouses, but he had to admit, despite its being one of many, Room 217 was pretty damn impressive nevertheless. A spacious room, with polished granite surfaces and regal carpeting, with some fairly good views across the nighttime city.

He gave a fairly generous tip to the bellboy (hey, he didn't need someone spitting in his breakfast) and shut the door after him, revelling for the next few seconds in his new place to stay for the week. It was the first time he had been back in a place of luxury since his fall from (sort of) grace two weeks ago- and hospital beds had been distinctly unenjoyable.

He was going to unpack tomorrow- it was two in the morning, and nowadays he actually needed to sleep. He left his suitcase in the living area, walking into the bedroom.

He was only two seconds from flicking on the lights when he saw it.

The bathroom light was on, and emanating from the room was sound of a running tap and a television.

In the dark of the bedroom, Crowley frowned suspiciously. He crossed back to his suitcase as quietly as possible, softly unzipped the case and pulled out a gun. It was perhaps a little bit of overkill, but he had spent centuries with people trying to kill him. He wasn't going to drop his suspicions just because he was now human- if anything, he had all the more reason to be careful.

He walked back to the bedroom, gun by his side as he made his way to the bathroom. He raised a hand to the ajar door, then pushed it open, pointing the gun at the bath with reflexes he didn't think he had anymore.

And he saw something he hadn't been expecting.

"_Loki?_"

* * *

><p><strong>AN: I am inordinately proud that I made Crowley's room 217. It doesn't bode well for his luck in this room, really.**

**Once more, please tell me if anything's bad or good. Probably bad. **


	4. In Which Crowley Throws A Vase

The man sitting away from the door jolted to attention, wet blonde hair flipping rapidly as he shifted in the bathtub to face Crowley. A television installed above the bathtub continued to blare for a second longer, before spitting static and going silent without the pagan god so much as glancing towards it. Crowley knew Loki's tendencies towards people, so he immediately lowered the gun, although he certainly wasn't ruling out using it. Trickster gods were most usually only susceptible to wooden stakes, but Crowley was willing to bet that angel blade bullets wouldn't exactly be a walk in the park for the Norse god.

The blonde man paused, tilted his head slightly, then adopted the same mildly shocked expression as him.

"Crowley? The hell happened to you?"

Oh, he was not getting into this, not right now. He performed a cursory glance over the man, thanking whatever deity (well, Loki) that the over-the-top levels of bubble bath obscured anything not above the water.

"The hell are you doing in my hotel room?" He retorted, sweeping his hand that wasn't holding a gun across Loki's current position in his bathroom. "I thought, last we met, you were more a 'conjure up a hotel room filled with playboy bunnies in an alternate universe' man, not a 'hide out in a booked hotel room' man."

Loki looked almost hostile for a second (Crowley gripped his gun a little tighter), before groaning, setting his glass on the side of the bathtub, and standing up. Crowley rolled his eyes as a completely naked Loki took his merry time about actually finding a towel as he stepped out of the bathtub and pottered about the marble-facade bathroom. Crowley bit back a point about how Loki could literally just snap a towel into existence, because it was clear the only reason Loki wasn't just supernaturally drying himself and snapping clothes into existence was to piss Crowley off.

Eventually, Loki wrapped a towel around his waist and turned to face Crowley, facing off the once-demon with an expression of resignation.

"I'll talk if you do."

Crowley gave him a confused look.

"Excuse me?"

"You're not a demon anymore, Crowley. And I think that's going to be just as interesting a story to hear as why I'm 'hiding out in a booked hotel room.'" Loki made a show of using air quotations.

Crowley raised a hand to his face and dragged it across. Damn pagan gods, even they could sense energy signatures (or a newly re-found soul, in Crowley's case).

"Alright,_ fine_. I'll talk. But I'm heading to the bar first."

Loki waved a hand.

"Already cleared that. Let's head downstairs to the casino, get a few drinks, catch up."

Crowley stared at Loki in a state of confused shock.

"You already_ cleared the bar_? How much is in there?"

Loki looked amused. "It's only an in-room bar, it's only got ten bottles. And room service is all out now."

"So you've drunk ten bottles- and _everything_ room service had?"

"Correct. All in all, about... forty bottles of wine, a case or two of beer, and a couple of bottles of whisky and scotch, that shit you seem to love. Tastes disgusting, if you ask me."

Crowley looked to the ceiling. Fucking Norse gods. He didn't even look tipsy. He looked back at Loki helplessly.

"_Alright,_ okay. It's two in the bloody morning, but _fine._ But put some bloody clothes on first."

"Oh, Crowley, you _wound_ me. Like I've ever turned up to one of our meetings without clothes." Loki's smile turned from a slight, amused smirk to an all-out grin. Crowley shook his head, turned away to leave the room and go get his wallet.

"That was an important meeting, Loki. The apocalypse was starting, I needed your assistance. _Not_ a striptease."

"My clothes were _wet_! The Winchesters turned on sprinklers on me a few minutes beforehand!"

"That doesn't mean you strip!"

"Oh, come on, you loved it!"

"We were in the _Ritz_!"

"The waiters loved it too!"

Crowley was in the living area by now, shaking his head at the memory. That had been a meeting and a half, and an utterly useless one. Loki had told Crowley he had absolutely no intention to try and help him stop the apocalypse (still while completely naked), and then he had buggered off and left Crowley to wipe the minds of everyone too innocent to have seen the Norse god ripping off his clothes in the middle of one of the most expensive restaurants in London. The drinks hadn't been cheap, either.

The drinks hadn't been-

Crowley snapped to attention from where he had been loitering in the living area of the penthouse.

"_LOKI!_"

The pagan god's response was lazy and nonchalant despite Crowley's angry tone. "What?"

"You cleared out the bar _and_ room service?!"

Loki poked his head around the door as he towelled off his hair. "Yeah, why?"

Crowley regretted having put down the gun at this point in time.

"_On my room's tab?!"_

Loki's confused expression cleared, then changed to an overwhelmingly happy expression.

"Yup!"

His head retracted behind the door again before the aimed vase could collide with it.

"You _better_ pay for the drinks downstairs!"

Loki opened the door with a flourish, fully clothed for once, neatly stepping over the shards of porcelain on the floor.

"But of course, Crowley babe," He crooned with a wink. "When do I ever fuck people over on things like that?"

Crowley gave him a glare as the two of them walked to the door.

"I may not be a demon anymore, but I could still kick your arse."

"I'm terrified, mortal boy. What're you gonna do, call the police?"

"Call the NSA and get you barred from all the Vegas hotels, maybe."

"...Let's go to the bar."

* * *

><p>"-And that's about it."<p>

Loki gave a low whistle. Around the two of them, perched on their plush bar stools, the drunken gamblers of the late night stumbled across the casino, clutching the remains of their life savings in hand. A few frazzled waiters and waitresses continued to ply both free and expense-laden drinks to the packed casino behind them- even at two in the morning, Caesar's Palace was filled with people just lining up to bankrupt themselves. Crowley and Loki weren't here to gamble, however- at least, not yet. Crowley sipped at a rather expensive scotch and felt the alcohol burn down his throat as Loki took in his story.

"So Sam Winchester screwed you over," Loki summarised with a tilt of his head. "And both hell and heaven are shut down."

"That's about it, yes."

Loki looked pensive for a second, swirling the alcoholic contents of his glass.

"Know who shut down heaven? Why?"

Crowley raised an eyebrow at Loki's unusual question.

"No, but- why do you want to know?"

Loki drained his glass, signalled for the bartender to refill it. He turned back to Crowley, sighing heavily as his glass was poured full again.

"Guess it's my turn to tell my story, I suppose."

Wondering vaguely when his holiday had been turned into a sleepover truth-or-dare session in a casino bar, Crowley gestured openly for Loki to begin.

"So, former King of Hell. I know your spin on your own kind- well, the ones who used to be your own kind. But what's your opinion on the ones who made you?"

Crowley looked up from inspecting his own glass of scotch to give Loki an incredulous look.

"Is this relevant to anything, or are you just stalling for time on the story which involves you breaking into my hotel room and putting several thousands of dollars' worth of drinks on my bill?"

Loki waved a hand impatiently, and in a slightly uncoordinated fashion- Crowley wondered if all the alcohol the Norse god had been drinking was actually beginning to take effect. "It's part of the story. Seriously, Crowlster, what's your take on angels?"

"Crowlster?" He said with a raised eyebrow, before admitting to himself that he had created worse nicknames, and letting it slide. He sighed, putting down his glass and giving Loki his full attention.

"When it comes to my predecessor as Hell's ruler, I'm not exactly enamoured of him- I had a hand in getting him back in his cage, so I wouldn't call us best friends forever."

Loki shook his head rapidly.

"Not just Lucifer, angels as a whole."

Crowley exhaled in a tiny snort.

"Angels aren't, on a whole, great bedfellows. I've worked with a couple over the years- you probably don't know Castiel, but I'm sure you've heard of Raphael- and I've found them exceptionally tricksy. Angels only care about either furthering their own ambitions or furthering God's ambitions, and it's surprising how often the two coincide in their own heads. They're dangerous, and and they have no sense of humour or pop culture. Honestly, I can't tell you which is worse- that they keep trying to stab me in the face, or that they have no witty repartee to add while they do it."

Loki took this in for a second, before giving a shrug and a nod, draining his glass again before facing Crowley with a tiny, pained smile.

"So if I told you I was an angel, you'd be pissed, right?"

Crowley paused. Stared. Then decided to drain his own glass of scotch before looking Loki in the eye.

"You're joking. Tell me that's a joke."

Loki's eyes went from a golden hazel colour to bright, shining white, radiating power that even in his newly mortal form Crowley could sense and fear (and squint away from). Before anyone else in the bar could pick up on the sudden radiation of grace, Loki's eyes faded back to normal.

Crowley stared in shock. He made an aborted motion towards his glass, before realising it was empty. He gestured jerkily to the bartender, who duly came to refill it.

He turned to Loki the second the bartender had gone again. He collected up what was left of his dignity and courage and aimed it into looking the not-pagan in the eye and asking his next question.

"So have you always been an angel, or are you just taking control of a poor trickster god?"

Loki grinned, but it smacked of being false. "Always been an angel, Crowlster."

Crowley shook his head, trying to take in this information. An _angel_. Loki was a bloody _angel_.

"Would I know your name?" He asked eventually, reaching for his glass and sipping from it again in a desperate attempt to cling to something that was normal in this batshit crazy world.

"If you've heard of the name Gabriel."

Crowley immediately spit his scotch out of his mouth again. He stared into space for a few seconds, eyes unfocused. Then he looked up at his drinking partner.

"_Gabriel._"

"Uh-huh."

"As in, the archangel. Messenger of God. Bringer of truth."

"Also good at parties."

Crowley felt like he was involved in some sort of sick joke.

"You _stripped in the Ritz_ while I trash talked about your brothers trying to kill each other."

"They'd be proud of me, I'm sure."

Crowley shook his head slowly. A thousand and one questions floated to the fore of his mind- he voiced the most immediately relevant.

"Still doesn't explain what you're doing in my hotel room."

Gabriel looked like he had been slapped. "Really? I tell you that I'm an archangel who's been posing as a pagan god for millennia and all you can ask is _why I was in your hotel room_?"

Crowley shrugged. "It_ is_ a good question."

Gabriel shook his head and drained his glass again before facing Crowley. "Like you said, heaven's shut down, Crowlster; I don't have the power to spare anymore to just create my own little pocket universe." He gave a little sigh. "Besides, if all my siblings are down here now, it's probably worth keeping a low profile."

"I hear that." Crowley raised his own drink to his lips.

Gabriel snorted. "Yeah, all the topside demons are probably gonna kick your mortal ass if they see you."

Crowley, still in the middle of sipping his scotch, gave Gabriel a little glare (and when did his life become mildly threatening heaven's most dangerous beings?) before setting down his glass and looking him over again. The alcohol was affecting him far more than it had ever done before, but he was still used to his previously far higher alcohol tolerance, and he was trying to drink the same as he usually did. Gabriel swayed ever-so-slightly in his vision.

"So." Crowley decided, leaning back slightly and crossing his arms. "We're in Vegas. We're both shut off from home sweet home. You're sort of a trickster god and I'm pretty good at poker. I vote we go drink and gamble like it's the end of the world. Again."

Gabriel grinned. "Thought you'd never ask, Crowlster."

The archangel slapped down on the bar a few bills he produced from absolutely nowhere, before standing up and gesturing openly to the expanse of the Caesar's Palace casino. Crowley stood as well, walking in a slightly uncoordinated fashion behind the archangel as they made their way to the poker tables.

* * *

><p>The rest of the night blurred together in Crowley's mind; only faint, vague images of card tables and glasses of champagne registered in his mind, a haze covering over the rest of the night. But four hours after he had left the Caesar's Palace bar, Crowley had passed out.<p>

* * *

><p><strong>AN: I propose a drinking game- take a character and drink every time they do. Actually, no, don't do that, you'll probably end up dead. Fanfiction health and safety and all that. Pick a non-alcoholic alternative. Pray you end up with Crowley and not Gabriel. And especially not the character arriving next chapter.**

**Next chapter, I get the holiday and the main plot into action by shamelessly borrowing from Jon Lucas and Scott Moore's brainchild. Then, having never actually seen said brainchild, I not-so-shamelessly ruin it.  
><strong>


	5. In Which Crowley Destroys Vegas

Sleep isn't at all like how it's portrayed in films. It's not a long descent into unconsciousness and a long ascent awake- it's a long descent followed by a very abrupt vertical drop into unconciousness, and waking up is the same.

So Crowley suddenly found himself to be conscious and aware, eyes opening slowly as his mind began to process where he was and how he was feeling.

And after a few seconds of processing, he had decided the floor he was spread-eagled across was incredibly uncomfortable.

And he had a headache. Crowley moaned weakly, dragging an arm across his face and shutting his eyes against the light. When had he last had a hangover? Four centuries ago? He had forgotten after years of drinking with no effect that the consequences the morning after were unpleasant.

He slowly began to think over the events that had lead him to his position on the floor.

He was absolutely horrified to discover that he couldn't remember a thing.

He slowly sat up, still clutching his head in a vain attempt to assuage the pain. He couldn't remember anything about the previous night. He had...yes, he had gone in the hotel room, and Loki had been in his bath, and then Loki turned out to be Not-Loki-Gabriel, and then-

Nothing. He tried to think back to the previous night beyond the Caesar's Palace casino bar, but only a few flashes of vague memories came up, flashes he couldn't make any sense of.

He began to realise past the haze of his hangover that on top of not knowing what he had done, he didn't know where he was.

He opened his eyes again, squinting against the sudden light. The sun had risen a long time ago, and light was filtering in through opulent, drawn curtains. A well-furnished room lay around Crowley, with a soft (but not bloody soft enough) carpet beneath him. He slowly registered it as a hotel room- perhaps his, perhaps not.

He was struggling to decide if it was his or not mostly because of the fact that since he had been unconscious the entire room seemed to have been remodelled.

Well, when he said 'remodelled'.

The previously pristine white carpet was now covered in bottles, pizza boxes, takeaway, and what he really hoped were stains from upturned bottles. Anything that counted as furniture was either upturned, broken, or both- a flatscreen television lay in pieces in one corner of the room, while an attractive mahogany table was now standing with its legs in the air, a pile of bottles on top of it. There were poker chips strewn across the room in numbers enough to in places cover the entire floor. There was a fairly large statue in the centre of the room that looked like it had been ripped from an emplacement. And a goat.

Crowley had to blink a few times when he noticed the goat lying placidly in the centre of the destruction. He stared at the goat. The goat stared at him.

Crowley got the feeling that something very bad had happened.

And that's when he heard him.

"Wakey wakey, sleeping beauty."

Crowley whipped his head around in shock and quickly regretted it, clutching his head and hissing in pain. He glanced upwards to the standing figure, expecting it to be an irate hotel manager, or Gabriel if he hadn't already pissed off and left him to deal with the scenes of destruction around him.

It was neither.

A man with tanned skin and curly black hair stood against the statue in the centre where he had been absolutely sure there had been no-one before, sipping at a glass filled with some sort of amber liquid. If he had been more lucid, Crowley might have recognised the similarities between the statue and the man leaning against it, but he was hungover and he had only just woken up and he had no idea what was going on.

The man snorted, appraising Crowley over his glass. "I've seen some wild nights in my time," He said, his voice intoned with an accent Crowley couldn't place, "But that must have been-" The man made a wide gesture across the room with one hand, smile wide. "-Spectacular!"

Crowley paused. Considered the stranger in front of him.

"What?" He managed, his voice hoarse.

The stranger stopped leaning against the statue, started walking across the hotel room with a spring in his step.

"Oh, why I'm here, yes. I probably shouldn't be. I mean, you didn't really complete your little offering to me, but before you broke down crying trying to sacrifice the goat, you had done everything right!"

Crowley pulled his hand over his face again, blocking out the light and amused expression of the stranger. He took in this new information slowly.

"Offering."

"Yeah, to me! A nice thought, nobody does it anymore," He mused, emptying his glass and turning back to face the statue head-on, facing up to the carved stone at least three feet taller than him. He adopted the same pose as the statue, one hand raised to the sky, one hand swept behind him. Still maintaining the arm positions, he pivoted to face Crowley.

"What do you think? Is there a resemblance?"

The statue was him? Crowley frowned at first the man and then the statue behind him, eyes narrowed at the stylistic title on the stone slab beneath it. It was in Greek, but Crowley knew a fair number of languages.

And he stalled.

At once the identity of the man explained a lot and didn't explain enough.

"Put on a bit of weight since then, Dionysus, but otherwise it's a good likeness."

Dionysus dropped the pose, narrowed his eyes.

"Hey, you want me to make your hangover worse?"

"Do you even know who I am?" Crowley managed, slowly standing up to face off Dionysus.

He pretended to be in thought, surveying Crowley over an empty glass while lazily waving his hand to refill it. "Hm... A foolish mortal who needs to watch his mouth while in the presence of a god?" He said, his eyes flashing with something vaguely predatory. Crowley made a show of rolling his eyes.

"Hm, maybe the former leader of Hell who most certainly does not need to watch his mouth, thanks," He retorted, wondering if those words were going to be his epitaph.

Dionysus stepped back slightly, curiously surveying Crowley again.

"Which leader of which Hell?" He finally asked, sloshing his drink around in his glass before draining it again. "There's a lot going around recently."

Crowley gave him a tiny grin. "You could call me Crowley."

Dionysus suddenly looked shocked and faintly incredulous. "You're Crowley? The rebel King of the Judeo-Christian Hell?"

Crowley gave a mock bow, which only furthered his headache. "The one and only."

Dionysus refilled and drained his drink again. "Didn't that Hell just get shut down?"

"And don't I know it," Crowley replied with a shake of his head. "Honestly, mortals these days. You spend years rebelling against Lucifer and his acolytes to finally get in power, and in one fell swoop two bloody hunters shut down the place and make you human. I mean, do they know how long it took to remodel the place? Getting all the bloodstains painted over was a pain in the arse!"

Dionysus snorted again and turned away from Crowley, parading around the room like it wasn't carpeted with poker chips and bottles. Finally, through the haze of his headache, Crowley realised something he really should have thought about earlier.

"Where's Loki?" He asked with a frown. He meant Gabriel, but he had decided that Dionysus probably didn't know that, given that Crowley had only just discovered that himself.

"Lo-" Dionysus spun around. "Loki? What do you mean 'where's Loki?' Loki's dead, your ex-ruler of Hell killed him! Everyone knows that!"

Crowley didn't. He vaguely went back to what he had last heard over the pagan god grapevine- and oh, shit, yes, Lucifer _had_ massacred a lot of gods a couple years back. He hadn't realised that Gabriel-Loki had been in that mess- but that made an awful lot of sense, in hindsight. Of course, it didn't help him knowing this now that Dionysus was giving him that look.

"Well," Crowley said painfully, "He wasn't. And we were out drinking last night. And now he's disappeared."

Dionysus' face was turning a strange shade of purple. "That _fucker!" _He growled, smashing his glass with his fingers and then immediately conjuring up another. "I thought he was dead for _years_ and he's off partying with ex-demons?!"

Crowley gave a little shrug. "So I guess you don't know where he is, that's fine, I'll just be-"

"_Oh no you don't!" _Dionysus grabbed Crowley from the lapels of his shirt as he attempted to turn and leave. "You may have been King of Hell, but now you're human, and you're going to help me find Loki because I need to punch him in the face and then _we have some partying to catch up with_!"

Crowley felt unbelievably vulnerable. He really didn't want to have survived countless horrors to just be killed by an irate Greek god of wine because he'd have to tell him-

"Sorry, mate, but I wouldn't be able to help- I can't remember a thing about last night."

Dionysus groaned theatrically, releasing Crowley and stalking around the room. Crowley started to dust himself off, then as he looked down at himself discovered something he hadn't known before.

His shirt was missing.

So were his trousers.

_What the hell had happened last night?_

Dionysus spun suddenly, gripped Crowley's arm and began staring into his eyes. Crowley leant back uncomfortably.

"Yeah?"

"So you don't remember anything?"

Crowley raised an eyebrow. "No."

"Flashes of memory, stuff you can't make sense of? Have you any of that?"

Crowley raised both eyebrows. "Yes?"

Dionysus smirked. "Perfect. You're gonna remember _something_ if we just backtrack from when you summoned me two hours ago."

Crowley felt sick. It was the middle of the day and he had only finished his little party two hours ago?

Dionysus leant back, clapping his hands. "Okay! So! Time for my favourite after-party game- find the missing pagan god! Loki's always drinking more than he can handle and passing out somewhere nearby, so he's probably still somewhere in Vegas- time to search for him!" He leant down and picked up one of the many poker chips. "And here's our first clue for the day-" Dionysus tilted the poker chip in his hand. "-Yep, Caesar's Palace poker chips!" He flicked it at Crowley, who caught it and studied the chariot and text engraved in the centre of the plastic chip. He looked up at Dionysus.

"So look there first?"

"We'll probably get us a good idea of where Loki's gone, if he's not still there- it's downstairs, let's go!" Dionysus made a move for the door.

"Wait! I'm only half-dressed!"

Dionysus turned back, gave Crowley an overly long appraising look and a lazy smile.

"And?"

Crowley glared at him. "I'm not helping you like this."

Dionysus sighed, rolled his eyes, and waved a hand lazily. Crowley immediately found himself back in a shirt and, more importantly, trousers. The god was already leaving. Crowley considered whether to follow or not. After all, he had to clean up, remove the makeshift altar to Dionysus (_and where had he even gotten the statue and the goat anyway?), _and get out of Vegas before anyone from the hotel management noticed the thousands of poker chips lining his floor which he was damn sure weren't here legally.

But on the other hand, he was curious to see what happened the previous night. Also, he really didn't want Dionysus to repeat mythology and turn him into a dolphin or something. He liked opposable thumbs.

So slowly, tiredly, head still pounding and feeling slightly nauseous, Crowley followed behind the Greek god, leaving a scene of carnage behind him.

* * *

><p>As he trudged behind Dionysus into the hotel lobby, the god slowed to walk alongside him, still liberally drinking from an ever-refilling glass that nobody in the lobby seemed to be noticing.<p>

"So, leaving aside the fact that I seem to be the only one who didn't know Loki was dead, why is the Norse god of mischief partying with an ex-demon who is referred to by everyone as the 'ultimate bureaucrat'?"

Crowley couldn't help but give a tiny smile at that. "Ultimate bureaucrat? Now that's a title I can accept readily." He shrugged slightly as he answered Dionysus' question. "But as to why I was having a little party with Loki- well, we're ex-business partners, and we bumped into each other in the hotel."

It wasn't untruthful, even if it left out the fact that Loki had in fact turned out to be Gabriel. And they had been business partners of a sort- the two had previously had an arrangement over avoiding one another's objects of torment. Loki got his victim of karmic recompense, and Crowley had his deal clients untampered with. It worked out well enough, and Loki had always seemed, if somewhat temperamental, an interesting enough person to associate with. And have contests with. The winner got the dealing or victimisation rights over a celebrity.

Crowley maintained that securing a certain Canadian pop star over Loki was still his finest work.

Dionysus smirked, shook his head, drained his drink then refilled it. Then he seemed to come across a new train of thought as swiftly as the last had left.

"So, former King of Hell," Dionysus drawled, casually flipping off the statue of Bacchus in the lobby as they passed it, "How are you handling your new humanity?"

Crowley shifted slightly to a more defensive tone in his voice. "Why do you care?"

"Well, you only stopped crying a few hours ago- clearly there are more funny stories on the subject."

He didn't remember crying, but it sounded, given his sickening behaviour since he had lost his demonic apathy, completely plausible. Crowley gave this question a second's thought before decidedly sticking two fingers up at Dionysus. A group of gaudily dressed American tourists gasped and put their hands over their children's eyes- Crowley would have felt guilty if he didn't feel so hungover. Dionysus just laughed and ignored the tourists with an air of utter indifference to their existence.

As they crossed the lobby and came to the casino, immediately it was apparent something was wrong. Crowley hadn't noticed the near-silence in the hotel lobby, but he noticed it now that the noise from the casino became more obvious.

And then they rounded a corner, and the poker tables came into view, and both god and former demon stopped still and stared.

Half the poker tables were snapped in half or scorched, shards of wood littering the glass with abandon. A few poker chips scattered the ground in a thin trail towards the entrance- Crowley thought back to the new carpet of poker chips in his hotel room and became horribly aware of how this was almost certainly his and Gabriel's doing. The statue in the centre, with a plinth announcing it to be Fortuna, the Roman goddess of luck, had been partially destroyed, one stone arm lying shattered on the ground. Spray paint covered the rest of it, with red enochian scrawling declaring that "Angels+Demons rule ok" and that "Fortuna fucked Servius Tullus pass it on!"

Crowley was ashamed to recognise that the second one was written in his own handwriting.

Casino staff and police were trawling the area, some crowded behind a bank of computers which seemed to be the CCTV control point. A couple of police were interviewing a very shaken-looking card dealer, who was pointing wildly to the tables and then the walls and then the scorch marks with a rapidity that almost made her arms blur.

Crowley groaned and rubbed a hand across his face. Fantastic. _Fantastic. _A single day into his holiday, and he had already decidedly ruined it. He had gone drinking with an archangel- and since when had that _ever_ been a good idea to do? Crowley glimpsed between his fingers a trail of $100 poker chips lying on the floor, and closed his fingers again, blocking out the light. He had gone drinking with an archangel- one of the most _powerful beings on Earth_- and now he had drunkenly summoned a fucking _god _who he was now _lying to _about 'Loki's' identity, and he was weaponless and powerless and he had _just wanted a bloody holiday._

Dionysus didn't seem to share Crowley's sense of injustice and loss of dignity. If anything, he looked ecstatic.

"I _knew_ waiting around after you summoned me was a good idea!" He gestured openly at the partially destroyed casino with a look of excitement. "Most people who summon me are either mad or boring- but _this!_" He swept one hand across the scene, a newly-manifested glass of wine in his hand sloshing from side to side as he gesticulated wildly. "I had always heard that the King of Hell was a bureaucrat who wouldn't know fun if it hit him with a stick, but clearly I have heard wrong!"

He continued to gabble and gesticulate, strolling through the casino like it wasn't partially burnt down. Crowley remained where he was, head in his hands and quietly ignoring the multitudes of people around him. He needed to figure out a plan, and fast, before he got arrested. He peeked through his fingers at the casino. Dionysus was observing the vandalised statue in the centre of the room, still talking to himself and drinking like there was no tomorrow; the casino staff and police were all too busy with CCTV and cleaning up the floor to notice his presence. He straightened, ignoring his pounding head or nauseous feeling, and took calm strides out of the casino, trying to act as if he was still the King of Hell, and not a hungover human with a missing angel problem.

Entering the lobby, Crowley sat down on one of the many luxurious guest chairs in the tiled room, trying to place himself as far away from the casino (and Dionysus) as possible. He fished through the pockets of his suit jacket, pulling out his phone. The screen was cracked, to his horror- he traced a finger over the once-smooth surface of his iPhone with a distressed expression on his face. It was the last thing he really had left from his demonic past- and as much as he now wanted to distance himself from the demon that had once been him, he still felt desperate to keep at least part of his kingdom to hand. He had lost so much in the past two weeks- he didn't want to lose this, too.

He clicked the power button with a sense of trepidation- he was met with a mixture of relief and amusement as his lock screen flashed up. He had almost forgotten what wallpaper he set. He swiped his thumb across the partially cracked screen and tapped in his password, and the photo of Bobby and himself disappeared.

To be replaced by a swathe of notifications.

He frowned, flicking through the apps with a renewed sense of trepidation. Hundreds of texts. Hundreds of them. How the hell had he set a casino on fire, escaped, _and _have solicited thousands of texts?

He was disturbed to see that not only had he messages from 'Cecily', he also had messages from 'Moose' and 'Not Moose. He tapped Cecily first, feeling more than a little worried at the premise of having to read the texts from the Winchesters.

_'Answer my calls. That guy's not human.'_

_'Stop drinking with him, he's going to outdrink you then mug you/kill you. It'll be funny, but I have more stuff to extort from you before then.'_

_'HWAT THEFUKC'_

_'IS HE AN ANGEL'_

_'HIS EYES JUST WENT WHITE ARE YOU INSANE STOP DRINKING WITH HIM'_

_'HE'S NOT EVEN AS HOT AS CASTIEL WHY BOTHER'_

_'DONT PLAY POKER WITH HIM'_

_'NO WAIT THIS IS BRILLIANT CONTINUE PLAYING POKER WITH HIM'_

_'OH MY LUCIFER ARE YOU CRYING'_

_'DID YOU JUST BEAT HIM AT POKER'_

_'DID HE JUST SET A POKER TABLE ON FIRE'_

_'WHY DID YOU BEAT HIM AT POKER CROWLEY HE'S JUST SET SIX TABLES ON FIRE AND THE CCTV IS STARTING TO BURN UP'_

_'I CAN'T SEE YOU I'M GOING TO HAVE TO FIND SOMETHING ELSE TO WATCH FUCK YOU'_

A gap of two hours and a new swathe of texts.

_'HEY THERE YOU ARE GOING SHOPPING'_

_'ARE YOU STILL CRYING'_

_'WHO IS THIS ANGEL GUY AND WHY IS HE NOW WEARING A HAWAIIAN SHIRT'_

And then a text from him. He winced.

_'OHhmyhgodgetofmycasehesaFRIENdokayYOLOYOLO'_

Crowley made a mental note to turn off his phone in the future before he went drinking.

_'Crowley, YOLO cannot be used for setting a casino on fire with an angel'_

_'youdnotlviemyliffe'_

_'What?'_

The texts continued in a similar fashion, with Cecily stopping her commentary of events to instead try and elicit more drunken texts from him. Crowley scrolled quickly to the bottom, where a text from him that had just been 'YOLO' written a couple dozen times had been ignored. He guessed Cecily got bored and went off to watch Castiel undress or something like the creepy Big Brother figure she was. He quickly tapped in a text and sent it off.

_'Can't remember anything from last night. After we set the casino on fire where did the angel go?'_

Then he backtracked to go check the other texts. With a creeping sense of trepidation, he tapped 'Moose'.

The first text was from Sam.

_'Stop calling me.'_

The only response to this text was a selfie of Gabriel and himself in a shop somewhere. Gabriel was in a hawaiian shirt and was wearing a fake moustache. Crowley was wearing a sombrero. Neither of them looked at all sober.

_'Stop texting me'_

_'SELFIE FOR SELFIE'_

_'Fuck off Crowley'_

_'sELFIE 4 SELFIE'_

The barrage of texts from him to Sam got less and less legible, but still they didn't stop. Until eventually there was a response from Sam.

_'If I post a selfie will you stop'_

_'ye'_

The next picture was of a haggard-looking man in a hospital bed, eyebrow raised and a half-smile on his face as he posed for the camera. Unmistakeably Moose, even if he did look a little worse for wear.

Then a new text from him.

_'Gabes sending you a hat'_

_'What'_

_'HE SENT YOU THE HAT SELFIE AND ILL STP TXTTING'_

And then a new picture from Sam. He was wearing Crowley's sombrero. He looked a mix of surprised, amused and terrified.

_'Stop sending me hats and fuck off before I call Dean.'_

_'luv u'_

And there the texts stopped. Crowley felt embarassed. Also terrified. The next texts were from Dean. Had Gabriel stopped sending hats through the aether through unknown means, or was he going to be hunted down by Dean Winchester tonight?

_Wow,_ he thought. _My life has gotten really fucking surreal._

He tapped 'Not Moose'.

He wasn't really surprised, although he was more than a little bit terrified.

_'ANSWER MY CALLS'_

_'I FUCKING WARNED YOU CROWLEY'_

_'DONT FUCKING GO NEAR US'_

_'THAT INCLUDES THE HAT THING'_

_'I MEAN I DONT KNOW WHY YOU WERE SENDING SAM HATS'_

_'BUT IT COUNTS'_

No further texts. Crowley winced. Sent off a text to Dean slowly, hands shaking infinitesimally, his head pounding even more badly than before.

_'If I said I was sorry and explained it was actually Gabriel and that I was drunk and it will never happen again, would you forgive me?'_

The response was almost instantaneous.

_'NO'_

Well, he was being hunted down by Dean Winchester. He was dead, then.

A new text pinged up from Cecily. Head still swimming from a night's alcoholism and the new revelation that Dean Winchester was coming to find him, he tapped it.

_'Wakey wakey, sunshine! You're my new fave thing to watch, besides hot wings. If you want information about where you and angel boy went, I want information too.'_

_'What?' _He texted back. The response was almost immediate.

_'Who was angel boy? My files say he's Loki but I'm obvs wrong'_

He winced. On the one hand, he didn't want to sell out the archangel Gabriel to a demon. On the other hand, he needed to find Gabriel so Dionysus would let him go so he could run away as fast as possible from Dean Winchester.

The decision didn't take long. He was human now, but he wasn't _that _loyal.

_'Gabriel'_

_'THE Gabriel?'_

_'Cecily I swear to Lucifer YES THAT GABRIEL WHERE DID WE GO'_

_'Keep your hair on, there isn't much left of it'_

_'CECILY'_

_'You went to the Forum Shops'_

Crowley stood up. Now he had a plan.

One-Find Gabriel.

Two-Lose Dionysus.

Three-Run away from Dean Winchester.

Easy, three step plan. He could manage this. He was hungover and human, but he was _Crowley. _There was nothing he couldn't handle.

Then his phone pinged again.

_'Oh, and Crowley?'_

His newfound determination started to ebb at the text.

_'What?'_

_'I don't know if you remember, but you might have pissed off Abaddon when you summoned her and 'Gabriel' turned her into a goat.'_

What. _What._

Crowley's hazy mind flashed back to the hotel room he had woken up in this morning. There had been a goat. He had attempted to sacrifice it to Dionysus. Oh he was so fucked.

His phone pinged again.

_'She's still currently a goat, but judging by CCTV the transformation's wearing off and she's trotting her way to the lobby. Have a great day.'_

He paused. Tucked his phone in his jacket. Took a deep breath.

New plan.

One- Find Gabriel.

Two- Lose Dionysus.

Three- Run away from Dean Winchester _and _Abaddon.

_He was so fucked._

* * *

><p><strong>If there is one thing I regret in life, it is this chapter. I really dislike it. But I'm ill, and it's already longer than I wanted it to be, and I can't keep looking at it or I'm going to cry.<strong>

**Next chapter, sombreros, Abaddon, Gabriel, and Dean Winchester. Also ducks.**


	6. In Which Crowley Sets Fire To People

As Crowley stood in the hotel lobby in a state of denial, a man with tanned skin, curly hair and a garish Hawaiian shirt strode up furiously, muttering Ancient Greek under his breath.

"Crowley!" He called out as he got to within two metres of him, making the hungover man wince. "I was standing there talking to you and I turn around and you're gone!" He glared at the once-demon with all of the godly authority someone wearing a hawaiian shirt can channel. "No running off until we find Loki! Or I might remember that one of us is a god, and one of us is a mortal, and I might remember just how much I _dislike_ demons, even if they are now human demons. And I-" Dionysus cut himself off, looking curiously at Crowley. He was standing rigidly still, his eyes shut, his curled fingers twitching slightly. "What? What are you doing?"

Crowley mustered up all of his patience and control into forcing out the next word. "_Compartmentalising_," he enunciated, unconsciously curling his fingers slightly more as he went over the events of 'textgate' in his head.

"Well, stop," Dionysus said, gripping a suddenly-materialised wine glass and drinking absently from it. "We have a god to find!" He clapped Crowley on the back with more force than was strictly necessary, making him tip over and almost fall onto the ground. Crowley twisted to give Dionysus a death glare. Dionysus looked mostly nonplussed, if a little curious. He tilted his head back slightly. "Well? Remember anything about where Loki went?"

No, he didn't. But he knew something. Crowley pointed vaguely across the lobby. "Forum shops. We need to go to the forum shops."

Dionysus grinned, practically bouncing across the lobby as he set off to the shopping areas of the hotel. "Then come on!" He pulled Crowley by the shoulder after him as he went. Crowley shook him off and walked steadily behind him, still trying to rationalise what he had heard.

So Dean Winchester was coming to kill him, for making contact with one Sam Winchester. Dionysus was convinced Gabriel was Loki, which Crowley was outright lying to him about. And, apparently, the goat was actually Abaddon. He was mostly having trouble with that part.

Crowley hadn't been drunk in centuries, but he wasn't typically a reckless person- he had been passing off most of last night as Gabriel's fault before he had read his texts. Now, he wasn't sure. He wouldn't have been able to physically turn Abaddon into a goat- that he could blame on Gabriel, at least. But he knew the summoning spells for a Knight of Hell, and he was certain Gabriel didn't- the idea must have been his. For whatever reason.

But this was assuming Cecily wasn't just lying for her own amusement. She was a demon, after all- a voyeuristic demon with a penchant so far for messing Crowley around. It wouldn't be outside of her personality to tell him that a goat is actually a transformed Abaddon on the warpath that was quickly turning back- it was close enough to her usual prankster style that Crowley started to realise that he was being played by Cecily. No matter how drunk he was, he would not find a goat for the sacrifice to Dionysus by summoning Abaddon and getting Gabriel to turn her into a goat. It made no sense. It was stupid.

Crowley smiled slightly, shaking his head at his own brief idiocy and allowing a slight relief to wash over him as he crossed the lobby once more. Abaddon was not in the building and was not imminently going to kill him.

And then he heard the screams behind him.

Dionysus didn't turn around, being as he was completely unconcerned with the human race. But Crowley turned. And felt his blood run cold.

Because now entering the lobby on the opposite side was a goat. Or at least, it looked somewhat like a goat. It was difficult to tell with the fact it was glowing red-hot and sparking fire where it walked. Also the lightning, and the exploding lights in the hallway behind it.

Crowley took a brief moment as the goat walked into the hallway and people began to scream and run around him to think about just how much he had fucked up.

Then he turned and ran, catching up with Dionysus and then completely overtaking him, a new adrenaline rush overtaking his body's control as he frantically thought up a new plan.

Step One: Get to the Forum Shops as quickly as possible.

Step Two: Find out where the hell Gabriel and he had gone.

Step Three: Get Dionysus to leave him alone by finding Gabriel and reuniting them both.

Step Four: Get to the Impala and get out of Vegas before Dean and Abaddon could catch up to him.

Crowley felt like crying. He had only been on holiday a single day and already two people were trying to kill him.

Although if he was to look on the bright side, two was the lowest that statistic had been in centuries.

A clatter and a sound of smashing glass, and Dionysus was running adjacent to Crowley, his ever-present alcoholic drink gone from his hand as he moved at speeds that Crowley hadn't thought possible of the ever-drunken Greek god. His eyes were wide as he turned his head to face Crowley. He began yelling in Greek on top of all the shouting and screaming in Caesar's Palace. Crowley yelled back.

"What are you even _fucking_ saying, you utter twat?!" he screamed, barely able to think above the screaming and clatter of people around him and the nigh-inaudible and yet still-overpowering low-pitched tone coming from behind him, the sound Crowley knew to be the words of the language of Hell, once clear to him and now only terrifyingly unclear. Dionysus gave him a horrified expression, his eyes flickering from dark brown to an unnatural gold before flickering back.

"WHY," He repeated in wavering and accented English, "DO YOU HAVE A DEMON GOAT?!"

Crowley strained to make himself heard over the screams, exploding lights and the unbearably low-pitched note reverberating through his eardrums. "OH, YOU KNOW, FOR PARTIES AND FORMAL OCCAS- _WHY DO YOU FUCKING THINK IT'S MY DEMON GOAT, YOU FUCKING WANKER_?!"

"IS THIS HOW EX-DEMONS HAVE THEIR HOLIDAYS? HAVE A DRINK, HAVE A GREAT TIME, THEN GET THEIR HANDSOME GOD FRIENDS MURDERED BY A DEMON GOAT?!"

"OH, FUCK YES; IT'S NOT A FUCKING _PARTY_ IF YOU DON'T GET MURDERED ONCE OR TWICE!"

"CLEARLY I'M HAVING THE WRONG PART-"

Dionysus didn't get to finish that sentiment, because the two of them suddenly and unceremoniously found themselves falling down a flight of stairs. Crowley yelped and swore as, bathed in the flickering light of hellfire behind them, they went careening down twenty carpeted steps as if they had stepped straight out of a Laurel and Hardy film. Crowley hit his newly-healed ribs a couple of times on the way down and only just managed to restrain from crying out in pain.

He rolled to a stop at the bottom of the stairs, gasping in pain from his bruised midriff. Dionysus, the Greek god that he was, had already got up and was rushing out to the end of the corridor, where artificial sunlight glowed up ahead. Cursing the ancient gods under his breath, Crowley managed to drag himself upward, half sprinting and half hobbling to the fake sunlight, leaving the hellfire-lit hotel lobby far behind him.

Dionysus and he stood in a shopping mall. Apart from the highly-strung security rushing past them to get to the unnaturally lit and very loud hotel lobby, the place was quite sedate. The walls behind the shops were painted with clouds and a blue-golden sky, a fake appearance of nature. Carefully positioned and set up lights bathed the mall in what could be thought to be sunlight but seemed too perfect. The shops themselves were the general fare found in a shopping mall, with the Caesar's Palace gift shop the only variation to the usual.

They were silent for a few seconds. Behind them, they could hear mayhem and madness and a few demonic-sounding bleats.

Then Dionysus spoke.

"Okay, find Loki, let's go," He said, walking through the mostly-deserted shopping mall. Crowley gripped his shoulder as he tried to walk away.

"Find Lo- Are you bloody _insane_? That goat is _Abaddon_, you maniac, she's turning back and when she does we're _dead_-"

Dionysus spun, gripping Crowley's arm with unnatural force. His eyes were crackling golden light and his profile was blurring around the edges from the outpouring of pure power.

"Listen to me, _mortal_," He spat, "You brought me here. And neither of us can leave because there is, you say, _a Knight of Hell _behind us. And maybe, just maybe, if we find Loki he can teleport me out of here. So we go this way. And you find me Loki." His grip on Crowley's arm became harder, and he only just managed to keep from crying out from the sudden pain.

"Or I will throw you to the demon and let you be a distraction to my escape," He hissed, and Crowley couldn't help but wonder if Dionysus knew how much of a complete dick he was. Just because he was powerful and immortal, he didn't _have_ to view humans as underlings.

_Wait._

Crowley took a second to realise just how hypocritical he had just been. Then focused back on Dionysus and nodded.

"Okay, right, find Loki," He managed, wrenching away from Dionysus. "Let's go."

The Forum shopping centre was fairly large, as hotel shopping centres go- and blissfully empty, as pretty much everyone was either running for their life or had already run. Dionysus and Crowley went at a respectable panicky speed-walk through the building, while Dionysus forwent merely conjuring up glasses of wine and instead started conjuring up entire bottles, drinking them and throwing the bottles behind him. If Crowley hadn't been so hungover and panicked, he would have asked for a bottle too.

While some shops held traces of Gabriel and Crowley's presence (scorch marks, poker chips, pizza boxes and sombreros), none held any trace of Gabriel. Crowley and Dionysus (especially Dionysus) were getting steadily more uneasy as the minutes dragged on- every bleat and subsequent crash in the background caused Crowley to jump and Dionysus to jump and then drink heavily from a wine bottle. Eventually, Crowley's patience left him- he dug into his jacket pocket, retrieving his partially smashed phone and sifting through the contacts. Dionysus began pacing back and forth, eyes flicking between the direction of the sounds of destruction behind them and the bottle in his hand.

"We cannot stop for a call, Crowley, those sounds are getting nearer-"

Crowley extended a hand and pressed a finger to Dionysus' lips as his call connected.

"Cecily Hammond speaki-"

"Don't _fucking _play games with me," Crowley hissed into the handset. He scanned the shopping centre, picked a CCTV camera, and focused all his anger on it. "Where the _fuck _is he?"

"You're adorable when you're angry," Cecily said with a smug tone. "Gabriel's not in the Forum Shops, if that's what you're asking."

"What?!" he yelped. "You sent me here; this is where I was supposed to go! I gave you 30 percent of my warehouses for your fucking useless employment!"

"30 percent _and_ all of the Lucifer's crypt items, actually-"

"_Cecily!"_ He screamed into the phone.

"Hey, you told me to tell you where you went after Gabriel set the casino on fire! This is where!"

He closed his eyes. Attempted to calm down.

"So he's not here, then."

"Nope!"

"Where. Is. He." He said through gritted teeth, certain that if he was still a demon that something in his general vicinity would have set on fire by now.

"Not in the Forum Shops, that's where!"

"_Cecily-"_

"Alright, alright, the casino down the road."

"Care to be more specific?" He asked dryly.

"You can't miss it, it's the partially burnt down one with the news crews surrounding it."

"Please tell me you're joking."

"It's too funny to make up. Have fun, 'your majesty'!"

"Fuck you." he replied diplomatically, giving a two-fingered salute to the CCTV camera and hanging up. Dionysus gave him a questioning look.

"What was that about?"

"My contact," Crowley said with a sigh, "Has informed me that we are in the wrong casino. Loki's in a casino down the road."

Dionysus seamlessly drained a bottle and swung it over his head, allowing the empty glass to sail through the air behind him. "Let's go," he said decisively.

Crowley was about to agree until he was drawn by the path of the thrown bottle.

Which crashed at the feet of a red-headed woman with pitch black eyes and sparks of red lightning emanating from her person.

"Uh." He managed, his eyes wide and terror-filled. Dionysus turned to follow Crowley's gaze.

"Ah." Dionysus assented, backing up a half-step closer to Crowley.

"Crowley." Abaddon said, a dangerous smile crossing her face.

But before Crowley or Abaddon could begin to speak, Dionysus spoke instead, his words almost certainly informed by the vast quantities of alcohol he had been consuming over the past hour. He stepped forward, only slightly in front of Crowley, keeping a fair distance between himself and Abaddon.

"Truly, Knight of Hell," he said, his accent more pronounced than usual, "The scriptures have not scratched the surface of just how, ah, _resplendent_ you are," He said, adopting a suave expression that had likely charmed many women over the years. If Crowley hadn't been rendered speechless by the sheer stupidity of Dionysus trying to use a charm offensive on a demon, he would have told Dionysus to shut up.

Abaddon only smiled further, like a predatory cat with its sights set on prey. "How sweet," she said, taking a single, smooth step forward. And then suddenly she had moved the distance between them in a split second. A bloodstained hand closed around Dionysus' throat and the Greek god went flying across the shopping centre, crashing through a wall and away from where Crowley could see him. And Abaddon turned, looking down upon Crowley from where she now stood a metre away from him, blood and viscera still dripping slowly from her hands.

"So," she hissed, her eyes cold and dangerously angry. "I emerge in the year 2013 to find that Lucifer emerged from the cage after _centuries _of waiting for him, and _you_ put him back in. And after you put Lucifer back in the cage, _you_ took over Hell." She took a step forward. Crowley took a nervous step back.

"-And when I come to instate a regime change under a more rightful name-" Abaddon snarled, taking another step forward- "_YOU_ shut down _HELL_!" Her bloody fingers curled into fists, red lightning sparking through the air and charging the atmosphere with a hum of energy. She grabbed Crowley by the throat with a speed he couldn't hope to match, electricity thrumming through his body as she lifted him with one hand. Her dark-painted lips curved into a dangerous smile.

"You dare," she said, deceptively calmly, "Do all this, and then presume to summon me and turn me into a _goat_, and assume that I won't _fuck you up_?!" Abaddon's fingers curled around his neck more tightly, and Crowley gasped for air desperately, his legs kicking where he was suspended above the ground.

She leant in to stare him in the face with eyes that turned into pits of darkness. "I'm going to enjoy tearing you apart," She hissed.

"CHRISTO!" Crowley yelped. Abaddon jolted, the incantation forcing her to flinch away, allowing Crowley just enough time to wrench himself free from her loosened grip and push her away. He had very little time and almost no weaponry- not for the first time, Crowley lamented not having picked up his gun when he had left his hotel room today. But he had one thing, his one item left from his reign in Hell- and he was ready to use it.

As Abaddon recovered from her involuntary movements and started to move towards Crowley, he had already turned his phone's volume up to full, tapped a track in his audio files, and set it to play at thirty times the normal speed.

Abaddon suddenly gasped, trying to breathe air she didn't need or want, her mouth gaping as her borrowed body started to reject her demonic essence. Black smoke trickled from her mouth, and she clutched her throat with her hands as if desperately trying to prevent it from leaving. Crowley smiled weakly as the sped-up audio file came to an end.

"See you in Hell," he said, waving as the audio file finished and Abaddon's being was ripped from her forcibly-taken body. Black smoke coiled across the shopping centre, twisted as if caught in a net, and was sucked by an unseen force downward. Only then did Crowley allow himself to breathe a sigh of relief. With Hell shut down, his likelihood of seeing Abaddon again was thankfully low. Until, of course, he went down to join her as a newly interred soul, as he inevitably would. He shuddered slightly. Then he was really going to pay for that little stunt.

A soft crunching noise came from behind him, and Crowley turned to see Dionysus crawling out from the hole in the wall he had made. The Greek god of wine looked significantly more sober than before, if slightly more concussed as well. He turned bleary eyes upwards to face Crowley. He seemed to be formulating some sort of witty comment about women playing hard to get- at least, that's what Crowley assumed the confused expression meant.

But Dionysus seemed to give up halfway through- he instead collapsed onto the pile of plaster and concrete he had forced from the wall, his eyes unfocussing.

"_Fuck_ demons," he moaned, one hand going up to rub his face. Crowley couldn't help but laugh derisively, rubbing absently at his neck where Abaddon had grabbed it.

"I don't know, she didn't seem too keen on the idea," he quipped. Dionysus slowly raised a hand that had all fingers but one curled into a fist. Crowley copied the gesture, but included a second finger as well.

"Loki," Dionysus managed, slowly dragging himself into a sitting position. Crowley shook his head furiously. Honestly, this was beginning to get obsessive on Dionysus' part. He understood that seeing a friend/drinking partner/fellow trickster-ish god that had previously been believed dead was probably high on the Greek's list, but this was getting to the point of a teenage girl with a notebook repeatedly writing their crush's name. In fact, Crowley was willing to bet Dionysus had such a notebook, with a pink gel pen to write in 'Loki' repeatedly.

Still, he needed to get rid of Dionysus without being killed or made into a dolphin- and that required giving him what he wanted. Crowley extended a hand towards the seated Greek god, which was quickly taken, Dionysus pulling himself upright.

"Right," Crowley said, clapping his hands together decisively, "To the 'casino down the road', come on, before anything else can bloody happen-"

Dionysus wasn't listening. Dionysus was in fact staring over Crowley's shoulder. Crowley almost felt like slapping himself for tempting fate as he turned around.

Black smoke was rising from the floor, twisting and turning through the air before seeming to note the prone body that was Abaddon's former residence, and pushing into the body's mouth.

As Crowley and Dionysus began swearing copiously and running for the exit of the hotel, Crowley couldn't help but realise the logistics of the issue. Hell was shut down, he had just tried to send Abaddon down to Hell- she must have bounced off and hurtled straight back to where she had come from. It was simple.

_It was also_, Crowley reflected miserably, _just his bloody luck._

* * *

><p>"Brilliant!" A man said with a huge grin on his face, stepping out into the Nevada sunlight. "Earth Las Vegas, the year 2013! Just where we wanted to end up!"<p>

A redheaded woman followed behind, her arms crossed and a slight frown on her face.

"How do you know it's 2013? Not 2012 or 2014?" She asked, her voice tinged with a Scottish accent.

The man adjusted his bowtie, grinning back at her. "I'm really clever!"

After a quick instance of being stared down by the man, he relented with the air of a child made to give up his favourite toy. "Alright, it says so over there on that building advert, but I'm still clever!"

A man stepped out behind them, looking more uncertain than the other two, with an incredulous expression on his face.

"You read an advert. That's not clever, that's just reading."

The man in the bowtie looked distinctly upset now. "Who here is taking the trouble of driving you to Vegas in an eons-old spaceship because he's a nice and very intelligent person?" He raised his hand, looked expectantly at the other two as if daring them to challenge him. "No? Then don't challenge my cleverosity!"

The redheaded woman looked amused rather than put down. "That's not a word."

"Shut up!" whined the bowtie-wearer, looking distinctly put upon.

"And technically, you're not a man, you're an alien," the other man pointed out.

The bowtie-wearer looked almost ready to throw himself down on the ground and have an all-out tantrum, but he and his companions were suddenly distracted by the two men sprinting down the pavement and ploughing through them in their haste to get past the group.

"Hey! Watch where you're going!" yelled the redheaded woman, eyes flaring with anger. The shorter man, with less hair than his compatriot, half-turned to look back at them.

"Sorry!" he yelled back. She squinted at him with the confused expression of one trying to remember a face and failing. Behind her, the man with the bowtie's eyes widened with dawning recognition.

"Canton?" he said with a frown, watching the two men run away.

"Unbelievable," the woman said, shaking her head furiously. "You can't even read an advert right. We're in 1969 again!"

"Okay, back in the TARDIS, let's get to the right year," the other man said with a long-suffering sigh, leading the two back into a police box, which promptly disappeared.

They happened to miss the woman with eyes of pitch and hands of fire sprinting past them as their police box blinked out of existence.

* * *

><p>"I'm standing here on Las Vegas Boulevard, where over the night, a series of attacks, believed to be the work of a rogue group of arsonists, have taken place."<p>

The reporter had her best serious-face on as she stared down the camera, before gesturing behind her. The Venetian stood behind her, a monolithic building of hotel complexes and casinos. It was considered a five-star resort, one of the finest in the world and certainly one of the finest in Vegas.

It was also partially on fire.

"As you can see behind me," The reporter went on, "TAO Nightclub, part of the prestigious Vegas hotel The Venetian, was set on fire at three in the morning last night, and is still burning now."

The camera swung to show that behind the reporter, teams of firemen were alternating between firing hoses at the building and gesticulating wildly at each other.

"Most fires spread or burn out," The reporter continued, her professional delivery wavering somewhat as her own confusion bled through into her reporting, "But the fire at TAO Nightclub has been doing neither- it has just been burning. None of the Las Vegas fire crews have yet given comment on this concern- more on this story as it develops."

The camera lowered and the reporter gasped for air, wiping her sleeve across her forehead. The cameraman looked equally overheated.

"Oh my god," She moaned, shading her face from the sun, "This is unbearable! It's so _hot _here!"

Behind her, one of the fire crew heard her loud complaints and unbeknownst to her raised his middle finger at her. She continued to whine and complain.

"God, when will they put that fire_ out_? Are they just so incompetent they can't put a fire out?"

Her cameraman spoke softly and tiredly. "Like you said, it's a concern they can't put it out- fires don't usually- well- work like that."

"Yeah, yeah, it's crazy, I get it," She groaned, pushing one hand backwards through her short-cut hair. "I always get the damn wacko stories, like that meteor shower when everyone kept saying they had seen angels falling from the skies. _Wacko stories!_ I deserve-"

She didn't get to say what she deserved, because her attention was drawn by the fire. Or the lack of it. In a single split second, the fire had gone out. There wasn't even any smoke. The firemen went silent, staring at the miraculous lack of fire. Then, realising there were news crews behind them that would have to let them take credit for the unusual fire, they all began to whoop and high five.

Until the man emerged from the charred remains of the TAO Nightclub.

"Oh my god, get the camera- get it- new developments at The Venetian," The reporter said, snapping her professional face back on in an eyeblink as the camera turned back on again. "The nightclub's fire has just been instantaneously put out, and a man has emerged from the flames! We're going to- interview him-"

The reporter practically dragged her cameraman to the edge of the police tape, but even if they had crossed it the police likely wouldn't have noticed. The man emerging from the building didn't look harmed- in fact, he looked absolutely fine. Perhaps a little drowsy, but otherwise completely fine.

"Sir! Sir!" yelled the reporter. The man, being hastily surrounded by confused police officers and firemen, waved them away, strolling casually towards the reporter and her cameraman. She brandished her microphone at him. "How did you just come out of that fire unharmed?!"

"Fire?" He questioned with a little frown, a faint shrug. "I dunno, I just woke up." He squinted, glaring up at the sun. "It's so _bright _today, ugh, for Dad's sake, I should quit drinking, hangovers are shitty."

The reporter frowned just slightly, breaking her professional facade. "I- the nightclub was just on fire, and then it wasn't, and then you came out of it looking-" She gestured helplessly at his clothing, which was soot and burn-free, if a little rumpled and slept in. The man looked at her with a condescending smile, before flashing a hundred-watt grin at the camera.

"Vegas, baby!" He said with a grin, producing a sombrero from behind his back, where the reporter was _certain_ there had not been a sombrero before. He placed it on his head, gave the reporter a wink, then ducked under the police tape and walked away.

The reporter stared at him as he walked away.

She blinked.

And she slowly began walking back towards the news van, eyes unfocused as she tried to comprehend what had just happened.

_Wow_, she was not getting that promotion.

* * *

><p>"'Just down the road!'" He gasped, beginning to slow down as he yanked out his iPhone. "I'll give her 'just down the road'!"<p>

Beside him, Dionysus was too busy alternating running and drinking from a spirits bottle to comment. It was without a doubt the most terrifying display of alcohol dependency he had ever seen, and he had met Dean Winchester.

He dialled the number with a practiced ease he despised he had to have. He would have yelled into the receiver, but he was far too busy outrunning one of Lucifer's finest demons and breathing to also raise his voice.

"You are- unbelievable-" He managed between breaths as he started running at a faster pace again. On the other end of the line, he could make out prim laughter. He scanned the area, found a CCTV camera, and raised two fingers at it as he ran by. The laughter increased in decibels on the other side of the line.

"You're the strangest runner I've ever seen," Cecily said, "And that includes Shorty Winchester- I mean, he runs with his knees a couple feet apart, but you-" She snorted suddenly, before regaining her composure. "-You're just too funny!"

"Don't hire you- to mock me-" Crowley said, beginning to really regret wearing a suit in the Nevada sun. In fact, he was really regretting a lot right now. "Where- is-"

"You're getting warmer!"

"Fuck off-"

"No, you're getting closer to Gabriel; he's walking in your direction! Although you do make a good point- the camera quality isn't great, but you definitely look like you could use a shower-"

Crowley gave a CCTV camera the middle finger and hung up. Dionysus looked expectantly at Crowley.

"Well?"

"Getting closer- keep going," Crowley urged desperately, hoping to all that was holy and unholy that when they got to Gabriel the archangel would have enough ability to get them out of Vegas- or at least hit Abaddon in the face fairly hard.

Dionysus gave a groan and willed another liquor bottle into existence; Crowley batted it from Dionysus' hands irritably, before looking anxiously over his shoulder. He couldn't see anyone behind him that appeared to be red-headed and demonic, but he could always be wrong.

"We can't keep this up," Dionysus gasped, slowing to a walk. Crowley, as much as he was averse to being murdered by Abaddon, had to agree- he slowed down too.

"Hiding in plain sight," He said nervously. "If we're slow and in the crowd, she won't notice us."

And then they heard a crack of lightning behind them, and both jumped around to see bolts of red light shooting into the sky, not too far behind them in the crowd.

"Oh, come on!" Crowley groaned, about to break into a run again until he bumped into someone. Said someone then stared down at Crowley from underneath his sombrero.

"Crowley?" Gabriel questioned, looking distinctly hungover if a little relieved. "What the hell did we do last night? I woke up in a nightclub that was on fire-"

"_Loki!_" came the response from beside Crowley- Gabriel winced in pain from the sudden increase in decibels and turned to face Dionysus, his eyes widening slightly in recognition and apprehension. If the Greek god noticed this difference in demeanour, he was probably too drunk to understand it.

"-Dionysus?" He questioned. "Where the hell did you come from?"

The god took a deep draught of his bottle of spirits before responding. "You and you-" He poined to Gabriel and Crowley in turn- "-Summoned me. Don't change the subject."

"That was the only subject so far-"

"-Doesn't matter!" Dionysus insisted, swaying slightly- Crowley wasn't shocked, as the amount Dionysus had drunk would have killed a lesser man. "You were killed by Lucifer!"

Gabriel raised an eyebrow and smirked, although he looked faintly concerned.

"Well, clearly I wasn't."

"Fuck you!" Dionysus said, poking him in the chest and batting his sombrero off his head. "We have partying to catch up with and a demon to get away from, so you transport us away-"

"-Wait, what?" Now Gabriel looked more concerned as he stooped to pick up his sombrero. "A demon?"

Now Crowley butted into the conversation. "Abaddon," He insisted, jerking a thumb in the direction of the screaming public and the bolts of red lightning behind them. "-So if you could kindly teleport us out-"

"-I can't." Now Gabriel looked, rarely for the archangel, fearful.

"What?" Dionysus questioned. "Why-"

"Can we leave the lengthy exposition to a time when we're _not about to be killed by a Knight of Hell?!_" Crowley yelled at them. The two supernatural beings immediately shut up.

"So where do we go now?" Dionysus asked, looking more worried by the minute as they watched the crowd begin to clear and a flash of red hair became visible once or twice.

Crowley hated to say it. But it was the only option he had left.

"Back to the Impala. Now."

* * *

><p>Dean Winchester watched the 'Welcome To Las Vegas' sign speed past him as he drove- admittedly too quickly- through the Las Vegas Strip.<p>

He knew it was overkill to go all the way to Las Vegas in order to hunt down Crowley, just because of a text and an apporting sombrero. He knew it was over the top, even if he'd deny it with his last breath. But Sam was still in hospital, recovering after his having completed the trials, and the last thing Dean needed was Crowley messing with his brother. He regretted having let the douche go, in all honesty; as much as the ex-demon seemed to have become a changed man in his new humanity, he had still committed unbelievable crimes as his demonic former self. It had felt wrong to let him go, but Dean had found himself overloaded with guilt and fear from heaven shutting down and Sam ending up in critical condition- he had ended up wanting to do anything else but turn a gun on someone.

But that moment of weakness had passed, and now Dean was ready to go on the offensive. Crowley was dangerous, and too clever for his own good- even though he was human, Dean felt he'd have no remorse in putting the former King of Hell down.

_Bvvvvrrrrr. Bvvvvrrrr._

Dean looked irritably at the phone sitting on the passenger seat as it began to vibrate loudly. 'Sam' flashed up in white lettering. Dean ignored it- Sam had been calling him all morning to tell him that he was "overreacting" and to "turn around" before he got himself killed. Dean knew what he was doing, and Sam would just have to live with it- it was for his own safety and protection, especially at a time when-

_Boom._

Dean jolted in his seat, hand going for the gun in his jacket in an instinctual movement before he stilled and took a second to figure out the scene outside.

The Las Vegas Strip was sunny and lined with people, as it usually was- but today those people seemed to all be running in the opposite direction from where he was driving.

Perhaps because of the streaks of red lightning painting the sky.

Dean growled out a multitude of swear words, revving the engine and rolling down the windows to shoot out of them as he approached the source of the unholy energy. _Crowley_; he knew he had been fucking stupid to let him go, that utter dickbag-

"_SHITSHITSHITSHITSHIT-_"

Through the open windows, the yelling ex-demon tearing through the crowd was clearly audible.

"_FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK-_"

Also, the archangel that Dean had thought to be dead was in close pursuit behind Crowley, a sombrero on his head and terror in his eyes.

"_ΓΑΜΏΤΟ__ΓΑΜΏΤΟΓΑΜΏΤΟ-_"

And a man Dean had never seen, middle-aged, tanned and curly-haired with a garish Hawaiian shirt and a bottle of wine in his hand, running desperately after them.

Dean had barely had time to process this before he then noticed a woman he knew all too well chasing them, a woman who just happened to be someone he had hoped would have been stuck down in Hell.

"Fucking _Abaddon_-" Dean swung the Impala around, cars braking sharply and beeping irritably around him as he began driving after the four running "people". He hated Tuesdays so much.

It didn't take long for him to catch up with the four, but then again they seemed to have found their destination- the parking lot of Caesar's Palace. Dean weighed up his options and chose a plan of action.

He swung the Impala around a second time as he caught up with the back of the four. Abaddon crashed headlong into the side of his car, creating a metal barrier between the demon and the three men. Dean got out and faced them, gun drawn and jaw set.

Crowley turned to face the scene from where he had been invested in the trunk of his car. He groaned.

"Can we wait until we've killed Abaddon before killing me?" He asked, lifting a huge gun-like object with a canister attached to the end of it. Dean almost felt like asking to borrow some of Crowley's hunting gear- he settled for a tight-lipped nod, before swivelling to face the demon who had physically moved the Impala across the parking lot. Dean couldn't help but wince slightly- his _baby_- before raising his gun and firing at the woman.

Abaddon gasped in shock as the salt and holy water-laced rounds burnt a hole through her body, before looking up with barely-concealed rage. A dark smile cut through her face.

"OUT OF THE WAY, DEAN!" Crowley screamed behind him- Dean jumped to the side and towards his car as Crowley lifted the long-barrelled gun.

"You can't kill me," Abaddon snarled, her eyes darker than night. "I'm a Knight of Hell. I am _forever_. You are little more than a corrupted soul with a gun."

"No," Crowley said with a smile, "I'm a corrupted soul with a _flamethrower_."

And with that, fire poured from the barrel, fire that swallowed Abaddon and began eating her away. _Holy fire_, Dean realised with sudden clarity. Crowley had a flamethrower filled with fucking _holy oil_.

He had to hand it to the guy- he was a dick, but he was a dick with some cool weapons.

Abaddon screamed, smoke swirling from her mouth and twisting around her burning body before jolting upwards and- gone. She was gone. Abaddon had transported herself away.

Crowley ceased the stream of flames and lowered the flamethrower. For a few seconds, there was silence.

"..._Really?"_ Gabriel said, sounding markedly disappointed. "That's the worst cool one-liner I've ever heard." He began to mock Crowley's London accent terribly. "'I'm a corrupted soul with a flamethrower'- _really_? That's the best you could come up with?"

Crowley looked slightly put out. "I literally just saved your life, and all you care about is the one-liner?"

The stranger with the wine bottle gave Gabriel a nod. "Earlier, before he exorcised her, he used 'see you in hell'."

Gabriel looked at Crowley with his best 'I'm not angry with you just disappointed' look.

"Crowley." He said with the tone of a scolding adult. "Did you use the one-liner 'see you in hell'?"

Crowley shifted uncomfortably. He mumbled something.

"_Crowley_-"

"Yes, I did."

Gabriel shook his head sadly. "I expected better from you, Crowlster. That's literally the worst line you could-"

"_Hey!_" Dean announced himself, feeling completely forgotten. He clenched his gun in his hand as the three turned to look at him. Crowley sighed.

"Yes, yes, I know," the British ex-demon sighed. "I'm very sorry for texting your baby brother and Gabriel is very sorry for sending him a sombrero."

"He is?" Dean questioned, giving Gabriel a severe look.

"I am?" Gabriel questioned, looking at Crowley and Dean in a state of vague surprise.

"Gabriel?" The wine bottle holder said with a frown, drawing the horrified looks of the other two men before Crowley shushed them all.

"Ah-ah-ah-ah-" He managed, lifting up his flamethrower again into one arm and using the other to point from one person to another.

"You-" He pointed to Gabriel- "Are very sorry for it, even if you don't remember it either. You-" He pointed to the wine bottle holder- "Will get a very long explanation later when we _aren't_ surrounded by hunters and police. And you-" And here he pointed to Dean- "Are going to accept our apologies and leave before I open fire."

Dean couldn't help but comment. "You haven't really gotten the hang of the whole apologising thing yet, have you?"

Crowley looked between his flamethrower and him.

"Eh," He conceded, "I've got the hang of the 'mine's bigger than yours' bit of it."

"That's not really how apologising works."

"Isn't it?" Crowley said. His flamethrower twitched upwards half a centimetre.

Dean's eye twitched. He took a step back. "You know what, you're right, it works like that, yeah."

Crowley smiled brightly. "Thought so! Now, we'll take our leave, and you take yours. Tell Sam get well soon from me." He dumped his flamethrower back in the trunk of his car, gesturing to the other two, who gave mutinous expressions to each other as they reluctantly shuffled towards the car and had a brief but spirited slap fight for the front seat.

Crowley gave a mock salute to the hunter. "'Till next time, Dean Winchester." He began walking towards the driver's seat.

That's when Dean noticed it.

"Crowley!" He yelled after the former King of Hell. The man turned around expectantly.

"Yes?" He asked.

Dean couldn't contain his utter disgust. "Is that the 2014 Impala?"

Crowley looked awkwardly between Dean and his car.

"...Yes?..." He managed.

Dean narrowed his eyes. Crowley swallowed.

"Wellhaveagreatdaycallyourboyfriendsometimeyou'regonnakillmeBYE!" Crowley yelped, running to the driver's seat and jumping in. The Chevrolet reversed jerkily outwards, and Dean leapt to the side before it could clip him.

Gabriel leant out of the car. "He's right, call my brother sometimes. He's not a social butterfly but I guarantee he'll come running if you give him a booty call-"

Dean leapt forward with a knife he flipped into his hand, but Crowley was already pulling away; instead, Dean had to settle for relocating his knife to another, more cathartic point.

"My _paintwork_!" He heard the ex-demon wail as he drove away. Dean watched as the 'keyed' Impala sped out of the parking lot and away.

Then he dragged a hand across his face and got into his own Impala. That was the last time he drove a couple hundred kilometers just to get attacked by a demon and protect the guy he was trying to kill.

_Then again_, he mused dryly, _he had already said that three times already_.

He toyed with his phone pensively.

Then tapped in a number.

"Hey, Cas," He said, a rare smile beginning to work onto his face as he drove into the waning Nevada sunlight.

* * *

><p>Crowley tapped his fingers against his steering wheel. The car was silent as they sped away from the partially burnt down Las Vegas.<p>

Gabriel was the first to break the silence.

"Hey, why don't we switch on some music, turn it up in here?" He said, his hangover seemingly forgotten. Crowley hadn't forgotten his.

"I don't have a stereo." He said curtly.

"Why?"

"I shot it."

Gabriel gave Crowley an appraising look. "...Why?"

"It was _annoying_." Crowley shot Gabriel a look, which was returned by an incredulous expression. But then their moment of animosity was lost as the man in the back seat spoke up.

"-So." Dionysus groaned, sprawling across the back of the Impala languidly. "Does anyone want to explain anything? At all? Because I would like an explanation. I would very much like an explanation."

Gabriel turned guiltily to face Dionysus. "Yeah, I probably should, shouldn't I."

"Don't tell me you're legitimately Gabriel. Tell me it's a pet name or a plot." Dionysus drained a glass of wine and stared down the archangel. "I can't take more deception from the gods, I really can't."

"Dionysus-"

"Oh, Lucifer, please don't tell me you're about to have a ridiculous emotional moment," Crowley moaned. "In fact, I'll help you both out. Yes, Dionysus, that is the real Gabriel, the archangel Gabriel, otherwise known as the almighty pregnancy test of Heaven."

"Hey, I resent that-"

"_Furthermore_," Crowley enunciated, "His drunken antics are the ones that nearly got us killed by a rather irate Knight of Hell, and as such I'm confiscating his fucking ridiculous sombrero." And with that, Crowley yanked the hat off of Gabriel's head and pitched it out of the car window.

"_Hey!_"

"You deserved that," Dionysus said, drinking another glass of wine.

"I'm being victimised!" Gabriel wailed.

"Gabriel, you are literally the most powerful being in this car," Crowley pointed out dryly.

"You threw away my hat!"

"Make a new one, you're the archangel!" Dionysus insisted.

"Heaven's shut down, I'm not made of mojo!"

"Why do you even care about the hat? You're millions of years old, you had that hat five minutes!" Crowley pointed out.

"Victimised! I feel victimised!"

"_I like big butts and I cannot lie-"_

Everyone in the car was silenced by Crowley's ringtone. Crowley sighed and picked it up.

"Hello?"

"Nice work with Abaddon, Ripley!"

"Cecily," He acknowledged. "Here to tell me I'm driving into another bloody supernatural being?"

"Nah, just here to say that I've deleted all the footage of you three musketeers destroying Las Vegas- you're in the wind."

"Good," Crowley sighed, brushing a hand backwards through his hair; one less thing to worry about, at least. "What happened with Abaddon? Spotted her anywhere nearby?"

"Nope- no clue what went on there, but I haven't seen her anywhere. Then again, I am multi-tasking here."

"Multi-tasking?"

"The great thing about being in the NSA- two monitors. One on your dumb-ass problems, one on a constant feed of the hottest angel alive."

"You're a one track record, Cecily."

"I'm a very clever, insanely beautiful one track record, though."

Crowley rolled his eyes. "If you say so. Look, while you're on the phone, I need you to book me a flight."

"What, I'm your PA now too?"

"What do you think I'm paying you for?"

"Past tense, Crowley- already paid. And we did not agree on that."

"_Paying__,_" Crowley said. "You think I'd give you all the Lucifer's crypt items off the bat? You'd take the payment and rip me off."

Silence over the line.

"You may not be a crossroads demon anymore, but you are in spirit, Crowley."

"Flattery will get you nowhere, darling."

Gabriel leant over towards Crowley. "Who are you talking to? Is she a sex line?"

Cecily sounded nonplussed. "Tell Gabriel I'll post all his embarrassing actions last night online if he calls me a sex line again."

Crowley smirked at Gabriel. "She said-"

"Yeah, I heard." The archangel pouted and looked out the window. "Bitch," he muttered mutinously.

"A condensed file of Gabriel's worst moments is now up on YouTube. Oh hey- it's already got six views!"

Gabriel made an irritated whining noise and got out a phone, tapping on it rapidly. Crowley snorted.

"Anyway," Cecily continued, "Plane journey. Where to?"

Crowley smiled slightly. "Venice."

"Ooh, are we coming?" Gabriel said excitedly, looking up from his phone.

"People who almost get me killed don't get to come," Crowley admonished.

"Can people who didn't get you killed get to come?" Dionysus added from the back seat.

"I'm sorry, in what way is calling me a 'pathetic mortal' getting you added to the Venice club?" Crowley questioned with a raised eyebrow. "I'm dropping you both off at the next possible opportunity."

"Fucker," Dionysus grumbled, leaning back to sip at his wine glass.

"One plane ticket to Venice, gotcha," Cecily said. "Can I go now? Castiel's about to have a shower."

"That's creepy and you're terrifying," Crowley said with a shake of his head. "Bye, Cecily."

"Bye, Crowley."

As Crowley hung up, he sighed in relief. Time to actually get some rest and relaxation in his life- no more of this crazed 'being chased by Lucifer's most loyal redhead' nonsense.

Things were finally beginning to look up.

"Are we there yet?"

_Mostly._

* * *

><p>"Bye, Crowley."<p>

She tapped her bluetooth headset and the call ended. Cecily finally swivelled in her chair to face her new arrival.

"So," she said, leaning back in her chair, "What do you want to know?"

Abaddon smiled. "Everything."

Cecily smiled back. She leant forward, closer to Abaddon.

"I think we can do that."

* * *

><p><strong>This chapter is embarrassingly long for its purpose, and proves I cannot edit. But hey, Crowley's off to Venice!<strong>

**A few notes about this chapter, however.**

**One- I cannot speak Greek. Dionysus' shameful language comes from some hastily translated 'wordreference' website work. If I have gone wrong and you know it, please do let me know. **

**Two- yes, I put in a Doctor Who cameo in the middle of this chapter. Yes, they think that Crowley's in fact Mark Sheppard's other character, Canton Delaware. How does this work? It doesn't. None of this works and if you think I know what I'm doing then you're sadly mistaken. But look, cameos! And, unfortunately, it won't be the last cameo.**

**Three- this took so long to update because my exams are in six days and although I have emails to write to people and revision to do, I wanted to at least get this done so I felt less guilty. I likely won't update again for a while, as I have a solid month of exams coming up. Hooray!**

**Four- I promised ducks. The ducks weren't forthcoming. I apologise profusely and beg for your forgiveness. The ducks will eventually arrive. Probably.**

**As ever, reviews and criticism are welcomed with open arms! Especially criticism. Seriously. I need it.**

**Have a great day, all!**


	7. In Which Crowley Likes Downton Abbey

"Come _on_, it feels like we've been in this car for months!"

"Shut it."

"But can't you just drop us off here? Oh look- a strip club! Drop us off here!"

"We'll get there when we get there."

"But where are we going? You're going to Venice, but we're not!"

"I have a plan, Gabriel, now shut it."

"You lost your sense of humour when you became human, you know that?"

"It's probably because it takes longer to get away from you."

"Man, fuck you-"

"Will you two _shut_ _up_?"

Dionysus was sprawled across the back seats with a couple dozen bottles and a look of frustration.

"Oh, come on, Dio," Gabriel said with a rare note of pained guilt in his voice, "Are you still mad at me?"

"Am I still-" Dionysus let off a string of rapid-fire Greek curses. "_Yes,_ I am still mad at you! You lied to me for thousands of years! _THOUSANDS_!"

"In my defence, I had just defected from Heaven!"

"And _then_ you were in the Elysium Hotel massacre and _didn't tell anyone you had survived_!"

Gabriel looked frustrated. "Look, I tricked Lucifer and hid out in Heaven where he couldn't find me. It's called survival! It would have defeated the point if I had revealed myself!"

"_BUT WHAT ABOUT AFTER HE WAS DEFEATED?!"_

Gabriel squirmed in his seat awkwardly, which was an amusing look for one of Heaven's firstborn. "I was catching up with shows...?"

"Did you watch Downton Abbey? That's a great show," Crowley said with a grin. Partially he was winding the conversation up for his own amusement- partially he needed to talk to someone about the last episode. It had been brutal.

"No, I didn't get round to that," Gabriel said.

"What? Everyone's watched Downton Abbey!"

"_QUIET, MORTAL! THESE ARE GODLY MATTERS!"_ Dionysus screamed from the back seat.

"_Mortal driving the car you're in_," Crowley specified with a little grin. "What if I just-" Crowley swerved the car a little with a sudden jerk of the steering wheel, inciting a yelp from Gabriel and a horrified "_My wine!"_ from Dionysus.

"Now, your choice- shut it or I wrap the car around a tree," Crowley said. Mutinous mumbling came from around him, but the two eventually went silent.

For five minutes more.

* * *

><p>"We're here." Crowley pulled up at Gabriel and Dionysus' final destination.<p>

Gabriel looked out the window.

"This is a joke, right?"

Crowley leant over and opened Gabriel's door for him. Gabriel glared at him the entire time he got out of the Impala, which lead to his half-tripping backwards out of the car.

Dionysus had already pulled himself from the back seat with a cacophony of clacking bottles as he did so- Crowley almost felt sorry for the Impala as he watched a red wine bottle roll out from the open door and slowly roll away across the forecourt.

"This is a gas station." Gabriel looked like he was considering either crying from his lack of wings or smiting Crowley where he stood and stealing his car. Crowley took a half-step backwards.

"I have my reasons. Look at the cashier."

Gabriel squinted through the glass doors of the building.

Then stalled.

"You. Bastard." He said, his eyes glittering with fury and betrayal.

"If your friends are going to know you're alive, your family deserve to know as well," Crowley admonished with a little grin.

"Wow, _thanks_, Doctor Phil," Gabriel deadpanned, "I had no idea my family didn't know I was alive, it's not like I've been hiding from them for _thousands of years!"_

"The angels have fallen, Gabriel," Crowley pointed out with a twinge of emotional response he struggled to keep out of his voice, "And you're the most authoritative figure they have right now. They're like lost puppies; they'll only end up falling over and hurting themselves if they don't have someone to guide them through the basics of living on Earth."

"And what's to stop me just leaving?" Gabriel said, his eyes flickering white-gold.

"Well," Crowley began, happy to be sharing the plan he had thought up on the car journey over, "I have in my hands a phone." He pulled it from his pocket and waved it in the air slightly.

"-And?" Gabriel questioned.

"And," Crowley said jubilantly, "I happen to be the former King of Hell. And I happen to have made a lot of connections over the years. Now, you went under the name 'Loki' when you hid from Heaven, right?"

It was a rhetorical question and they both knew it. Gabriel's façade of confidence was dropping just slightly.

"…And?" Gabriel questioned.

"And," Crowley said, unable to contain his amusement as he clicked on a contact and hovered his thumb over the 'Call' button, "If you don't go in there and talk to your brother, I'm calling your adoptive mother and you can have a nice long conversation to her instead."

Gabriel's fake air of confidence evaporated.

"You _wouldn't_," He breathed.

"Want to take a bet on that?" Crowley tilted the phone so Gabriel could see the words 'Frigga' on the contact screen.

"You're fucking _bluffing, _Crowley."

Crowley couldn't help but grin. "You know I don't bluff, _Loki._"

Gabriel looked with horror between the phone and the gas station. Then he made a faint groaning sound and stomped towards the gas station. He looked over his shoulder at Crowley.

"That was a low blow, dickface!"

"Keep walking or I'll call your mother!"

Gabriel flipped Crowley off and kept walking to the gas station, looking like a condemned man. Dionysus sidled up to Crowley.

"So, what? You going to call my mother too?" He said archly, looking at Crowley's phone suspiciously.

"Tempting, but no." Crowley replied, gesturing to him for a glass of the wine Dionysus was currently drinking. The two drank in companionable silence for a second as Gabriel walked to the cashier's register. "I'm guessing you want to catch up with Gabriel, even if he isn't who he said he was. So go on- catch up."

Dionysus chuckled lowly and sipped some more wine from his glass. "Angels and demons. I try not to get too close to them."

Crowley looked sideways at Dionysus, and was reminded that for all his brash tone and declarations of power, the Greek god of wine was a minor god in a pantheon far larger than he could fight against. Crowley was so used to playing with the most powerful beings of the universe that he had almost forgotten what it felt like to be powerless.

"It's not about Heaven and Hell. To be honest, now that both are roaming the Earth, your safest bet is to travel with the most powerful of their gang still living. But it's not about that. It's about Gabriel, as an individual, as the Loki you knew him to be. He's still that Loki, and you're still that Dionysus, regardless if you have wings or horns or a different name on the deed poll. And as much as both of you refuse to admit your emotions, you two might need each other. There's a war coming, and you two are going to have to remind each other to loosen up and party once in a while."

Dionysus stared at Crowley a little while, before draining his wine glass.

"You might be right."

Crowley allowed himself to feel a little smug.

"I usually am."

"Even if you are a mortal with a poor taste in wine."

Crowley wordlessly raised his wine glass and two fingers in a mocking salute to Dionysus. Dionysus grinned, before stilling, his face going alarmingly serious.

"You really think there's a war coming?"

Crowley shrugged. "What else could happen with Heaven's finest and Hell's worst walking the Earth?"

Dionysus squinted, as if trying to look through Crowley to see the being within- and given that the man was a god, he probably could.

"That's what you're doing, then. Going on holiday to run from it."

Something in Dionysus' statement cut through to Crowley deeper than he had anticipated- his face scrunched up in anger.

"I'm _not_ running!" He snapped, suddenly very angry and not entirely sure why.

Dionysus raised his hands in surrender. "Hey, just saying. That's what we all do."

And with that, Dionysus turned and walked after Gabriel in the dimming light of dusk.

Crowley watched the group for a second as Gabriel walked up to Castiel in the gas station. Then sighed, draining his wine glass and turning back to his car.

To find a huge queue of about ten cars behind it.

The man in the closest car slammed his palm against the wheel in frustration and leaned out of the window.

"Hey, douchebag, finished with your soap opera? Move your fuckin' car!"

Crowley gave him the middle finger and drove away. Some people just don't understand an emotional moment.


	8. In Which Crowley Makes A Friend

"This is your pilot speaking, and I'd like to welcome you to flight GK-4170 on Delta Airlines, non-stop overnight to Venice. We have a safety announcement..."

Crowley looked pensively out of the plane window, tapping one finger rapidly against his armrest as the vehicle taxied across the runway. He had never actually flown by plane before. Once he had become a demon, and had mastered the art of tearing through space like it wasn't even there, any sort of other transportation had become redundant.  
>That was the only reason he was apprehensive, naturally. It was just that it was obsolete technology compared to his previous method of transport. No other reason at all.<p>

He decided not to count the fact that he glanced out of the window at the engines and made a strangled whimpering noise.

He had spared no expense for his first trip on a plane- he was flying first-class with a reputable plane company, with free champagne and luxurious seating the whole way. He had given himself the best money could buy in order to get through this bloody plane journey.

And yet he was still fucking _nervous_. Of all the emotions Crowley had been faced with since his curing, nervousness was one of the ones he despised the most. He couldn't quantify it, couldn't control it, and couldn't distract himself from it- his emotions took over and consumed him and made it impossible to think.

So he accepted more free champagne from the flight attendant and forced his breathing to go to a reasonable pace when he could, and tried to pretend on the outside that he was entirely calm.

He wasn't really succeeding.

"Nervous flier?" A voice asked from an incredibly close range.

Crowley jolted a foot away from his seat, sloshing his champagne over his leg.

"Jesus _suffering_-" Crowley looked up, his eyes wide as he clutched his champagne glass like a lifeline-

-To stare into a pair of piercing blue eyes, glittering with amusement.

"I'll take that as a yes." The eyes backed up as the figure attached to them stood up straight, allowing Crowley a proper view of the person who had surprised him.

A man, slim and tall, with ash-blonde hair and a lined but handsome face with those glittering blue eyes (and now Crowley couldn't tell if they were doing so with mirth or malice). He was wearing a grey shirt with an absurdly low v-neck (Crowley's past training as a tailor gave him the urge to set the shirt on fire), partially covered by a black jacket, and his neck was adorned with a long, silvery necklace.

Crowley would have been flirtatious if champagne wasn't leaching into his trousers.

"Hilarious, you are," He griped, half-heartedly rubbing at the wet patch on his leg. "I sincerely hope you're in economy."

The man chuckled and proceeded to sit on the reclining seat to the left of Crowley's. "You're a charmer, darling," he replied with an accent that Crowley couldn't quite underpin as purely British. "I was only asking a polite question." His mouth turned upwards into an imperious smirk that Crowley wanted to punch.

"Yes, _darling_," he replied, "But you were asking it with your mouth two inches from my ear."

The man grinned, then, actually _grinned_, and Crowley wanted to upturn his champagne glass over his head. But he smiled diplomatically, turned away and remained silent, and attempted to put the bastard out of his mind.

He only managed thirty seconds before the thrice-damned man began speaking again.

"You haven't answered my question," a flirtatious voice said from his left.

"You're still here?" Crowley shot back, sipping at his champagne to feign nonchalance as the plane began to speed up.

"_Are_ you a nervous flier?" The man reiterated. Crowley did not look at him.

"Perhaps. Do you have a point to make?" He replied, putting acid into his tone in the hopes it would get the man to shut up.

It didn't.

"No need to get defensive- some people are, that's fine." The sentence would have sounded innocent if it wasn't for the man's distinctly teasing tone.

"I prefer higher quality means of transport than a tube of metal hovering thirty-five thousand feet in the air," Crowley replied tensely, not daring to look out of the window as he heard the engines begin to roar.

"Don't we all," a pensive voice hummed in reply. "Flying is all well and good when you can rely on yourself, but when you can't; it is a different experience entirely."

The response was profoundly odd, and Crowley knew it- he snapped his head to the side to meet curious blue eyes and a tense figure sitting to his left.

"I'd agree entirely," Crowley said, threads of suspicion in his voice. "But conditions have changed in the past month."

"Indeed they have." The man's eyes were alight with an emotion Crowley couldn't place. "Many states of existence have been altered."

"Naturally." Crowley had completely forgotten his nerves about the plane, because the man opposite him had suddenly become far more worrying. He chose his words with care. "Some areas have fallen, some have closed entirely."

The man's face lost all pretence of amusement, and Crowley felt the blood drain from his face. They observed each other silently for a moment.

"How about," the man said tersely, "We don't ask and just ignore each other for the rest of the flight."

"Sounds like a plan," Crowley replied weakly, shakily raising his champagne glass to his lips.

A beat of silence.

"But for the record, if we got in a fight, I'd win."

Crowley stalled. Yes, he was human now, and yes, he was less powerful than he was before, but what he did have was a sizeable and now distinctly fragile ego.

He set down his champagne glass with a distinct 'clink', staring down the mysterious man.

"Trust me when I tell you- I would win."

"Please."

The dismissive reply only served to needle his ego further. Crowley narrowed his eyes and wished he could turn them red for dramatic effect.

"Oh, believe me, I've fried bigger fish than you."

The man leaned across his seat like a predator surveying its kill. "Really, babe? Even though you don't know who I am or what I can do, you're so sure of that?"

Crowley leaned across his seat as well, unwilling to permit the stranger to take an inch more than he did. "Oh, I'm sure, darling."

The man pushed himself closer. "Why don't you prove it?"

Crowley matched him, putting their faces less than a foot away from each other. "_Why don't you try?"_

"...Excuse me?"

Crowley and the man both looked up in unison, to see a huge metal trolley inches away from their faces. Both pulled back sharply (Crowley would deny it until the day he died that he yelped), and the confused-looking flight attendant pushed the trolley past them both.

The heat of the moment past them, both men looked distinctly embarassed by their own behaviour. Crowley gave the man a single parting glance before taking his gaze over to his television screen instead.

"Just stay out of my way," he said with a tone he hoped sounded dangerous (and in fact sounded shaky and slurred).

It took him a minute more to realise he was already in the air.

At which point he (_did not_, he would always insist afterwards) began to whine and knocked back the rest of his free champagne.

* * *

><p>The rest of the flight passed in a haze of paranoia, poor quality film selections and alcohol- Crowley knew he was past the point of no return when he found himself knocking back his fifth glass of shit wine while diverting his attention between the mystery supernatural being and The Lego Movie. It felt like a certain type of creative torture he had employed in Hell; although he had gone for hellhounds, magma and Adam Sandler films. Far classier than a plasticised Will Ferrell.<p>

It was around two in the morning now, and Crowley was thoroughly smashed and distinctly tense. He was travelling on a plane, trapped next to a mystery supernatural being, bluffing that he was more powerful than he actually was, drinking the worst quality alcohol he had ever tasted. His life just spiralled out like a poorly made comedy nowadays.

He chanced a glance at the being next to him. He was asleep, or at least he was doing a fair job at pretending to be asleep. Crowley thought of a lion at rest; always ready for its next kill to come wandering into its midst.

Crowley sighed, grabbed his wine glass and stood up; he needed a walk.

And naturally, because fate despised him, it was at that moment that turbulence hit and Crowley went flying. And naturally, because fate had a terrible sense of humour, he went flying and ended up sprawled on top of the man. The wine glass spiralled a pinwheeling arc through the air and ended up soaking them both, before clunking on top of the man's head.

The man opened one eye, taking in the wine, the wine glass, and the Crowley on top of him.

"If this is your way of attacking me, I'm really disappointed in you," he said lazily. "Although you get credit for the attempt at sexual harassment." He looked meaningfully at Crowley's hand. Crowley looked down too and found it positioned where he least wanted it.

Crowley stood up carefully, wiping off his hand pointedly. "I'd be more interested in a fish," he retorted weakly, wiping some of the wine from his face. "Turbulence." He said finally, gesturing to the plane around them. Indeed, it was still juddering and shaking slightly, making standing a difficult feat.

The man looked around them, as if only noticing the tremors for the first time. His eye twitched, as his fingers dug a little tighter into his armrest.

Then he relaxed, almost forcibly, and waved his hand with a protracted air of indifference. Immediately, the plane stilled.

"Happy? No more groping?" He drawled, inspecting his wine-soaked v-neck with overwrought nonchalance. Crowley rolled his eyes.

"Try to make a girl happy..." He deadpanned, wiping off his face and sitting down heavily again.

The man looked up. He smirked triumphantly.

"Gotcha."

Crowley frowned. "What?"

"None of my brothers would rise to that innuendo." The man said, maintaining his relaxed posture even as his eyes took on a predatory gleam. "Which only leaves one option. _I know what you are."_

Crowley paled. The man- no, angel- stood to tower over him, and his eyes were blazing with white light.

A glint of steel flickered into the angel's palm before he lunged.


End file.
